#have never actually seen flcl....

[baconvonmoose]

Thanks again for responding to my previous ask. I have a couple of additional questions about native folklore more broadly if you don't mind.

1. With the understanding that obviously the best sources are going to be firsthand retellings, are there any particular collections or works you are familiar with that you feel do a pretty good job of accurately presenting these stories that you would recommend?

2. Seeing as the Wendigo is sort of an outlier in terms of popularity, are there stories of other specific creatures/spirits that you wish people were more familiar with?

3. Okay, this one is actually unrelated, but I love the way you use bold, dark lines in a lot of your art. Are there any specific artists that you would say have helped inspire your current style ?

Certainly! Thanks again for your curiosity. I'll do my best here.

A few people have asked me about this film already but I do stand by that it is the best film about the wendigo I've ever seen personally, Ravenous (1999). Incidentally despite people admonishing the game for this, from what I've heard Until Dawn actually got it right. But I haven't played this game, I'm just going off how someone described it to me. A book from 2016 called Wrist is by an Anishinabe author, and it's not a 1-to-1 depiction but it's sort of a combination of more modern ideas and the Ojibwe versions. Unfortunately these are the only things I can think of. I've seen far more versions that are NOT accurate.

2. YES.

On the theme of the wendigo, I was told the story of Winter Snow. I don't think there's any media for this, but the gist of it is, two boys live with their grandmother. While they're off hunting, a stranger visits the grandmother and asks about them, waiting for them to return. When they return that night it's with a buck for their grandmother to cook. She allows the visiting stranger to stay for dinner and eat some. Then, the stranger asks to stay the entire winter, which she allows, feeling that this stranger was good luck and provided medicine (sorta 'magic') when the two boys go hunting. The stranger goes by the name Winter Snow. When spring comes, the stranger thanks the grandmother for her hospitality and leaves, and as the snow melts the next morning the grandmother hears screaming and moaning outside, where she finds her two grandsons melting, having been transformed into snow (snowmen in some versions) by the stranger.

Another popular story that could be in theme with the 'misunderstanding' of the wendigo is the Deer Woman. She sometimes is a human, sometimes a deer, and sometimes a combination of both. She's benign to children and aspiring mothers, but will sometimes steal a woman's husband only to lead them to their death or to pine from heartbreak. Some say this only happens if the husband is abusive. My family that lives in Shawnee tend to tell her stories as more of a malevolent spirit that will trample young people who are being wreckless in the woods.

We also have a character named Nanaboozhoo who is a 'hero' kind of figure, and there's a lot of legends and myths about him and his brother and grandmother. (AFAIK he never turns into a snowman though lmao)

3. Thank you, I'm very flattered! However the funny truth is that the art on this blog is NOT my current art style, it's actually pretty old now, I stopped using this blog for years because I kinda gave up posting art on social media for a bit. However I can tell you what I was inspired by still; Jamie Hewlett's work, The World Ends With You, FLCL, a strange anime film called Dead leaves (big recommend), and probably a bit of Invader Zim for good measure.

[centrally-unplanned]

H/t to @cozotoro on this one, they recently brought up a very cool Mamimi fanart that is apparently from something I did not know existed; The "GAINAX NET Art Musuem", a collection of CDs Gainax released assembled special art that they published on their website. Btw their OG website was amazing:

So this art wasn't just a "whatever" collection, they put some degree of work into it. The CD cover is great of course;

But anyway I just wanted to highlight a few of them that I think are neat. The original shared one is of Mamimi (from FLCL ofc) by Tsurumaki himself:

Which, being dated to 1999, makes this something from right in the middle of production. I love this piece because its hitting all of my boxes right now - after reading paragraphs of Tsurumaki talking about the manga influences of FLCL, how much this art screams the styles of Moyoco Anno & Kyoko Okazaki is a direct proof of that influence thread. The color stacked with the sketchy fill of her jacket really sells that haggard, aimless fog of the rebel teen. (Having no bra isn't hurting that vibe either)

Takeshi Okazaki being aggro as fuck on this one, love the perspective shot. Rei is portrayed as passive and without agency very often, but not so much with this level of vulnerability, and I like how it plays that note on both the physical and emotional levels.

Here we have Hajime Ueda doing fanart for The Wings of Honnêamise, which is exactly the tonal opposite of everything he stands for and therefore the perfect choice for his gremlin hands. Making everything a fish-eye lens so that the picture is itself a globe the rocket is taking off from is just cute shit.

This one actually broke containment, you see it in FLCL fanart dumps around the net. Yusuke Yoshigaki may be one of the youngest of the FLCL crew but he obviously gets it. Though he apparently hates Ninamori, poor girl getting very short billing here.

Fucking Princess Maker fanart, I have never seen Princess Maker fanart! Princess Maker 3 girl has a great outfit, what a trim, even if Princess Maker 2 in the middle is ofc the best game in the franchise

This Nadia piece by Nishigori works well for me, I love how smooth it is with the faded colors and thin lines while Nadia is still rocking things like a rainbow belt. The "modern AU" genre complete with girl-with-oversized-headphones is always a win, and hey now its retro; and I appreciate how modernized Nadia is while still looking like herself, its a good style blend.

Obligatory Imaishi Gonna Imaishi!

But yeah there is a lot more in there, actually this is one of several volumes of CD's. Definitely worth a look.

[paxesoterica]

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury reminded me that I actually do enjoy watching anime, and since I have a bit of a backlog of ones I’ve either watched a few episodes or haven’t started at all, I was inspired by this post to make a scorecard of anime that I intend to watch over the course of this year.

My self-imposed rules are I will not start any other anime before I have finished these 16 (with the exception of Witch from Mercury, see below), I will be watching them with Japanese voice acting and subs, and that, gvien my experience with watching Witch from Mercury on a weekly basis, I won’t try to binge and instead watch an episode or two each day, since that will fit better into how busy life can get, and also give me more time to really think about what I just watched before moving on.

The shows above are listed in chronological order of release (1979-2023), but not the order I’ll necessarily watch them in (I like having the freedom to pick and choose), with additional notes below:

1.) Mobile Suit Gundam (1979; dir. Yoshiyuki Tomino): A more experienced Gundam fan who is also fond of Revolutionary Girl Utena recommended this and War in the Pocket (see below) if I was curious about other Gundam shows. Since I’ve been meaning to watch some older anime for awhile anyway, this seemed like a good series to start with, especially with its historical importance to the medium. I have previewed the first episode and I think it holds up well so far. I will only be watching the 43 episodes of the original anime at this time, so not the movie compilations or the sequel series like Zeta or ZZ (yet).

2.) Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989; dir. Fumihiko Takayama): I mentioned that I would permit myself freedom to choose the watch order, but since War in the Pocket is a side-story set around the same period as Mobile Suit Gundam, I feel it would be better to watch the former after the latter, so that I’ll have a better understanding of the setting.

3.) Goldfish Warning! (1991; dir. Junichi Sato): Goldfish Warning! has an interesting history, in that it’s something of a predecessor to Sailor Moon: the latter would reprise the former’s timeslot, much of its staff (including the director and his assistants, among which was a young Kunihiko Ikuhara), and a similar style of slapstick comdey. As a bonus, I’m 99% certain that one of the leads, Chitose Fujinomiya, would serve as inspiration for the Revolutionary Girl Utena character, Nanami Kiryuu. I will be watching both the 45 episode anime series and its accompanying film.

4.) Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995; dir. Hideaki Anno): The thing that piqued my interest in this show was a short review that I read years ago (don’t remember when or where), and that may have been translated from Japanese iirc. The review talked about how gender roles in Eva were inverted compared to mecha shows that came before it, such as how Shinji acted more like stereotypical female characters from such shows, while Asuka acted like what you’d expect from stereotypical male characters. I don’t know how true that observation is, but it stuck with me, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for that. I will be watching the original 26 episodes as well as the End of Evangelion film. I’m debating if I also want to include the Rebuild of Evangelion films, but I’m currently leaning towards watching those sometime later.

5.) FLCL (2000; dir. Kazuya Tsurumaki): I watched the first four episodes at a con, but never finished, so I’ll be doing a rewatch from the first episode. I’ll be watching the original OVA series, but leave the sequel seasons for another time.

*6.) Princess Tutu (2002; dir. Junichi Sato & Shogo Koumoto): I needed to watch this anime after watching an amv of it titled Dance of Death (it’s got spoilers, including for what I’m assuming are the last episodes, but if you don’t mind that or have already seen it, I highly recommend giving it a gander). I watched ‘til around episode 16~ until real life interrupted, so I’m starting over and watching it from the beginning. This is the first of the three shows I’m currently watching, and up next is Ep. 02.

7.) Michiko & Hatchin (2008; dir. Sayo Yamamoto): Multiple reviewers I trust said it was good, the setting and premise sound pretty different from anime norms, and I’m intrigued by the bit of trivia that apparently the director made it explicitly for office ladies to enjoy after coming home from their shift.

8.) Star Driver (2010; dir. Takuya Igarashi): Pretty sure I learned about Star Driver from this chart tracing the work of some of the members of Be-Papas (not *everything* anime-related comes back to Revolutionary Girl Utena, but a lot of it does, yeah  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). I’ll be watching the series, but I’m not sure about the movie since apparently it’s a compilation film, so I’ll have to think about it.

9..) Penguindrum (2011; dir. Kunihiko Ikuhara & Shouko Nakamura): I’ve heard mixed opinions on this one, but it’s an Ikuhara-directed anime so I want to watch regardless, and form my own opinions about it. I’ll watch the 24 episodes, but I’m not sure about the Re:cycle films that came out recently.

10.) Mob Psycho 100 (2016; dir. Yuzuru Tachikawa, Takahiro Hasui): Someone made a vhs recording of the show’s first OP that ran on loop, and that was apparently enough to lodge itself in my brain. I watched the first season and a couple episodes of the second, until real life interrupted, so I’ll start fresh and watch all three seasons, plus the two OVAs that were apparently made.

11.) Sarazanmai (2019; dir. Nobuyuki Takeuchi & Kunihiko Ikuhara): Another Ikuhara-directed anime. I was halfway through before real life interruptions, but watching 11 episodes should be relatively easy.

12.) Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle (2020; dir. Mitsue Yamazaki): In retrospect, I slept on this show, as I hadn’t realized it was another comedy by the director of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, not to mention that the premise is a nice subversion of a classic fantasy trope.

13.) Shadows House (2021; dir. Kazuki Ouhashi): I dug the gothic fantasy vibe I got from the review I read. I will be watching both seasons.

*14.) Bocchi the Rock! (2022; dir. Keiichirou Saitou): Repeatedly saw the protagonist compared to Suletta Mercury due to social anxiety, and am staying for the show’s willingness to experiment with animation. This is the second of the three shows I’m currently watching, and up next is Ep. 05.

*15.) Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (2022; dir. Hiroshi Kobayashi & Ryou Andou): The whole reason I started watching this show was this post. And now I have brainrot am perfectly normal about this show. Starting with Ep. 02, I watched this show every Sunday it was out, and intend to resume doing so in April. It is possible that I might not be able to finish this show in 2023, since previous Gundam shows have run about ~50-ish episodes, and this show’s predecessor, Iron-Blooded Orphans, was initially slated to run only 25 episodes, only to reveal that the show length had been doubled in what would have been the last episode. So, I’ll finish Witch from Mercury in either 2023 or 2024.

*16.) The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady (2023; dir. Shingo Tamaki): Another lead compared to Suletta, this time due to rescuing a bride from her jerk fiance and being really gay. This is the third of the three shows I’m currently watching, and up next is Ep. 04.

[catgirlhell]

🎶✨ when u get this u have to put 5 songs u actually listen to. then send this ask or tag 10 of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)✨🎶

i'll kill you for cursing me @unclekow

the best way to describe what im listening to at any given moment is that im either playing the soundtrack to an anime that only exists in my head or attempting to block out all psychic attacks inflicted upon me from the world with the power of jazz and 90's/00's japanese alt rock and hip hop.

Get Down to Business, aka the Order Sol Theme by Daisuke Ishiwatari

It's the Sol Badguy music. It's the ultimate cool old guy who sucks music. I have a cool old guy who sucks that I've been thinking about. It's important for my delusions.

Lay Back by Lotus Juice

I am a *very* big fan of acoustic hip-hop, and I also really like japanese rap. I haven't actually listened to Lotus Juice that much (my teenage years were still defined squarely by Nujabes and his contemporaries!) but I've found this introduction to his work to be interesting! I'm looking forward to listening to more of it.

P.H.D. - Portable Headphone Dancefloor by 2mello

You, a buffoon, might say its cheating to list a whole album. I, a genius, would claim that its sacrilege to not treat a house mix as one whole song. If I were to take a single pick from it, dreamin on its own is probably my favorite track out of it all, so much so that I have spliced it out and extended it for my own listening. I've been a fan of 2mello for awhile now and I can safely say that every album he makes is my favorite of his until he makes the next.

Ka Bohaleng / On the Sharp Side by Abel Selaocoe

I don't talk about it much, but I was actually raised in a family that practiced and professionally performed Traditional West African Drum and Dance. As a result, I've always been partial to traditional/ethnic music worldwide, especially African music, and Abel Selaocoe is like the holy grail of such. His work can be described as "classically trained baroque that is distinctly African in nature," and I regularly stream his live performances and studio album. If there is anything in this list I would beg you hear, it is this song, and to a further extent, his performance at Cologne Jazzweek.

Akaneiro ga Moeru Toki/茜色が燃えるとき by Scoobie Do

This thing snuck up on me towards the start of the summer and blew my tits clean off. I'm a person very much trapped in the pre-2010's, especially the late 90's-late aughts. As I get older, I lean less and less towards new media and instead indulge in rediscovering older stuff. I have never watched a Gungrave. I have never played a Gungrave. But I have managed to get my hands on the majority of Scoobie Do's discography and play it regularly. The band is still active, but like all things, I am obsessed with their mini-album Kaze no Koibito, which has this song on it. Please listen to this song and please listen to Scoobie Do. The band is called Scoobie Do man, just do it.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Sleepy Head by the pillows

Earlier this spring, I finally watched Fooly Cooly for the first time ever, after maybe 6 years of people twice my age asking why I had never seen it when it seemed to be so completely grafted to my tastes. Well I did, and then I immediately drew my catgirl holding a guitar because of it. I'm not normal after that show. "Why did they keep asking you why you'd never seen it" I hear you asking. *ahem*

Because I've been listening to its soundtrack and the rest of the pillows discography since I was like. Twelve.

Don't ask me how I found it because I do not know. But between Ride on Shooting Star and this, I've returned to the FLCL soundtrack maybe once every 2 months for about a decade. This isn't propaganda to watch the anime, but it is propaganda to listen to the soundtrack.

@teffiniwynn, @kdinjenzen, @puyopuyo, @shukitanuki, @qwk, @lamphoera, @yuleloggu, @alien-tidays, @girlballs, @ockitten

im gonna go daydream about cringe shit goodnight

[mrawkweird]

Well since FLCL is gonna be relevant again for a bit I'd love to bring up something I noticed but never saw discussed (mostly because everyone hated or avoided the shows on principle) but it's about Haruko. Specifically it's about how Progressive's and Alternative's two versions of Haruko parallels the two views of Haruko most people have. One where she is a rough but well meaning big sister and the other where she's the antagonist of series hiding in plain sight.

Full Swing is the best of the example of both views, Haruko knows Naota has feelings for her and deliberately spends a chunk of the episode having a robot version of his dad preform lewd acts in front of him, even going as far to have actual sex out loud with the door cracked open. Not to mention she's shown to be a pro at baseball another thing he's insecure about and something he's connected her with since the 1st episode. All this to get a satellite thrown at Mabase knowing that if Naota couldn't "swing the bat" the town would have been wiped out. Despite all this manipulation and disregard for life she gives Naota genuine good advice about "swinging the bat". Even her little disappearing act right as Naota swings the bat can be seen in the same light as parent letting go of their kid as they try riding a bike for the first time.

Now in regards to the two sequels Haruko has seemingly been split in two. In Progressive Haruko is openly manipulative and even more prone to anger. Her obsession on getting Atomisk (whether or it's just for his power or actual love) on full display. Seemingly going along with the viewpoint of people who after re-watching the original that she was the villain in plain sight.

Progressive is interesting because Haruko is almost uncharacteristly helpful to the group of girls even when she's not showing it directly. Giving the girls advice on their rocket, knocking around Hijire's ex after he dumped her for Haruko, wearing Mosan's outfit for the fashion show, and do I even need to mention her little therapeutic rap to Kana? Not counting the episode where she fucks around with Kana's crush (which only lead to her realizing she didn't really care about him as much as she thought) She even kinda sorta tries to reassure Pet's is alright leaving Kana behind for Mars. This reflects the chaotic big sister view to a T. It's also worth mentioning that Atomisk doesn't seem to exist in Alternative at all. So I guess when he's not around she just remains chaotic neutral.

Since they've done both of these types of Haruko in these shows I can't help but wonder if for the next two will she be different or will they flip between the two for whatever version fits the show they're trying to make.

I think there are 2 ways to look at what happens with her character to determine where we go from here and it comes down to the 2 views I've seen about Alternative and it's the idea of it being a prequel to the first FLCL VS it being a sequel to Progressive.

There's the possibility that Alternative showed her being more helpful for the protagonists because if this is a prequel then it's before she started becoming fully driven by the Atomsk obsession. However, the whole thing surrounding the prequel talk has been iffy because there's confirmations and non-confirmations with evidence disproving it being a prequel flying all over the place. At least from what I've found on the subject.

Now if we're looking at things from a sequel perspective then the way she acts can also be seen as her actually maturing as a character and showing how the events of Progressive changed something in her. You kind of can't be the same person after crying on your own shoulder. While dropping certain bad habits though she's still gonna be Bugs Bunny in these streets regardless.

The Haruko we get next depends all on what side of the coin they choose to ultimately fall on with Alternative and whether or not they're about those stealth prequels or full on committing to everything being a sequel. If it's a sequel then we may be continuing with Haruko being that helpful chaotic force but if it's a prequel then we're getting the Haruko that's only going to become more reckless and ultimately split. Grunge from just the first trailer is giving such heavy Season 1 energy that either they're just wanting to "return to form" or there's some timey wimey shit going on.

Maybe it is just as simple as the presence of Atomsk or lack there of actually altering how she behaves. Or perhaps she's just different with every story. Maybe there's a multiverse of Harukos, maybe her whole life is an anthology. Part of me feels like ultimately the endgame of FLCL could turn out to become her story all along. That she's not just the mascot of chaos but the main character.

[creepycute-puppy-gf]

Okay amine,,,well backstory is I quit watching anime when I was a teen bc I watched Chobits and sobbed profusely bc I felt I could never have what they had and that hurt me too much so I put it away for over a decade.

Before that though I was a pretty big fan, I love(d) the 90s animes and have seen a ton of the known dubbed ones and I was very in love with Sailor Moon yes homo and Card Captor Sakura and (endless list of anime girls I've been in love with) into my beloved FLCL.

idk after watching all the Ghiblis in HD half a dozen times I finally caved, I watched an anime a dear friend recommended and I fell in love with it instantly. (I will review it too dw but that's not today's case) and this year I've finally just eased into trying them again.

So what IS today's case? Seasons 1 and 2 of Don't Toy With Me Miss Nagatoro!

YEAH she bullies him, he's into her bullying and jock shit, she's into his demure sheepness and his art nerd shit, they are both actually very lovable and cool people and the plot progress is aggressively constant. The art is lovely too, I'm actually a huge fan of this one!

It's a mixture of modern story heavy progression and classic tenchi-muyu silly edgy semi-lewdity but they're both secretly push overs so it's fun watching them freak out when their games accidentally go the way they were teasing they would.

In truth it's hard to talk about without spoiling because it is just gags inbetween constant story progress which I actually like a lot, it is a romance and it is super heartwarming seeing them both change for the better as they support and push each other to grow. This is what all great warriors strive for imo. 9/10

Art Club President is based, I want to be her when I grow up.

[lapinaraoflimbo]

FLCL is a show that’s not about anything in particular. It’s a show about robots, about space pirates, about fighting with guitars, about comedy and heavy stylization and the joy of experimentation. But it’s also about trauma, the ways that broken family situations leave people vulnerable, the way that people who don’t fit conventional molds get excluded, the way those people try to reach out and connect with other people and the ways and reasons that they’re unable to find that connection they so desperately crave.that they’re unable to find that connection they so desperately crave.

FLCL does not feel like a heavy show when you watch it. The style and flair and speed of it helps all of these themes come and go without weighing heavily. But these themes are present, all throughout the show you can pull away the wrappings of excess and what you’re left with in the end is a heartbreaking story about a child who gets caught up in things he never should have had to deal with.

It’s the way that FLCL plays this game that makes it so special. Playing along the lines of what it’s saying, never explicitly saying it but never shying away from it either. The themes are present and they add up when looked into. Mamimi’s begging for scraps and her hesitancy to go home, the lack of her talking about her family life and the soreness that comes up when it is mentioned. Evidence of her being bullied at school. The conflict between her idea of a relationship with Tasuku and the actual evidence of what Tasuku thought of her. All of this comes to help us understand why she attaches to naota. Why she is never seen spending time with anyone else, and maybe why Naota lets her stick around when she seems to make him so uncomfortable.

It’s rare for any piece of media to explore in depth the sort of harmful relationships that stem from the lack of protections provided to children, and if FLCL did not present its story in the way that it does, with its layers of robots and space wars and secret organizations and anime powers we would certainly be left with a show that would be almost impossibly difficult to watch. The themes and the story would put this show in the realm of something akin to goodnight punpun. A cycle of trauma and abuse that leads to more trauma and abuse. A failing of adults to protect the children around them. The system excluding and preventing those same kids from success just in the way it’s intended to.

When watching FLCL one has to ask what the benefits of obscuring heavy themes in this way is. Certainly if the themes were explicitly shown they would be able to deliver themselves with less confusion. Just take a look at all of those who claim that FLCL has no story, no themes, and no sense to it. There are many who watch this and see that flair and think it’s a show about random robot fights and secret organizations working in nonsense ways all adding up to nothing more than a fun lasershow. But media should never be judged solely by its worst critics.

It’s also true that FLCL has managed to reach out to many. To find the types of people it is written about and give them a space to safely explore what they have gone through. There must be some value to this approach when it has found so many who adore it.

One could consider FLCL to be aa surrealist show. It certainly leans heavy into surreal elements. Strange animation styles, abstract visuals and random cuts between different times and places. But contrary to a lot of heavy surrealism FLCL stands out for its simplicity. It is a show about things. Picking the pieces of this story up is difficult, on a first or second or even third watch. But slowly with more watches more pieces fall into place. More of the unexplained gets explained, more coherence forms underneath the surface. There is rarely a point in FLCL where one has to guess what happens, or rarely a point where something is only implied or symbolic.

The story straddles this line of complexity and simplicity. It becomes difficult to discuss when the story can be so simple to address but the themes of that story have limitless depth. Every action a character takes in the show shows some aspect of who they are. Everything is intentional in FLCL. Everything adds up to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Snippets from conversations can lead to greater understanding of a character, from Naota’s playfulness when he lets his guard down to his father’s love of evangelion to Ninamori’s excitement over the school play

These sorts of small little snippets will re-contextualize earlier scenes, adding to the narrative created and helping to explain the motivations that led to character actions. It’s rare to ever have something presented without greater context for it appearing somewhere else in the show.

It’s this complexity of the characters that comes back into the themes of the show. The themes get explored in a similar way, one small fragment of them at a time but with the full depth of their complexity explored throughout. The contradictions of the harm and the benefits of these relationships all add together and no statement gets made on them. The fragmentation means that no statement can be made. Choices and outcomes and motivations are never framed with judgment. All characters are treated as if they are trying their best with what they have been provided.

There is no actual villain, in FLCL. One could point to medical mechanica, but the organization plays a relatively small role in the story. Nothing is driven by them as a threat, and fighting against them is rarely framed as the actual purpose of climax of an episode. The fights with the robots certainly create a visual and sonic climax, but it’s always triggered by something else happening. Usually a confrontation between two people. Both of them getting overwhelmed, emotions boiling over until they can’t hold themselves together anymore.

Nothing evil causes these instances. It’s not presented as an attack, or anything aggressive or even intentional. This framing is likely one of the core things that makes FLCL so difficult to understand for those who aren’t familiar with it. You expect an antagonist, something that the characters will fight against, will triumph against. But nothing interesting ever happens in FLCL. There isn’t really anything to fight, just some fireworks every so often.

This is essential to exploring the themes of FLCL. Relationships and harm done by them cannot be understood through the framing of evil. Harm in relationships is complicated, made even more complicated by the fluid and changing personas that we try to embody. There is depth and compassion that can be found for everyone, and through its framing FLCL provides compassion for those that rarely get it.

[mew-cake]

bestie you better go the fuck OFF cause i was thinking of watching magical destroyers

i'm laying on my bed kickin my feet give me the DIRT

Short version: It's about nothing. It makes no fucking sense. It tries to simulate the style of things like klk or FLCL (according to people who have actually seen that show) but it fails because nothing fucking matters. The whole "owo the otaku are oppressed" is about as deep as a kiddy pool and nothing interesting is done or explored or anything

Also something something sexualization of young girls like I THOUGHT at some points it was going to make. Ya know. COMMENTARY on the predatory nature of the anime industry but it never does and, in fact, LEANS INTO the sexual depravity and I fucking hate it and I hate this so goddamn much

Long answer: Give me like a week or something I express my rage through visual mediums

[squeemcsquee]

Anime Central 2023, Day Three (Sun)

Sunday kicked off with an early morning wakeup in order to snag a working elevator and get all of our gear to the car. Well, there was one elevator, and we were able to snag it. So, victory - I shudder to think what it was like for other attendees later in the morning. 

As awful as getting up early on Sunday can be, it’s worth it to not wait 15 minutes to squeeze into an elevator full of other people and their bags. We finished loading the car by 0730 and so were also able to grab breakfast before things got too busy there as well. 

But it really is a sad state of affairs when you realize that being inside an elevator feels like a novelty for the weekend. 

I also need to give props to Embassy Suites staff for their patience and assistance when I went racing back from the con center to the front desk to request to be let back into the room we had checked out of because I’d forgotten a prop.

Yep, I’d forgotten my headphones for cosplaying Cecil. Thankfully, getting back into the room wasn’t an issue and that was the very last time I had to climb the Embassy stairs for four flights that weekend. 

Our first event of the day for the con was the panel “10 Good Animes Under 20 Episodes.” As the panelist went through the list, I realized that I’d seen a few of the titles, though never in full. Specifically, Paranoia Agent, Midori Days, and Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto. FLCL I’ve seen now a couple of times. I do have an interest in checking out the other titles at some point.

               The panelist liked to offer trivia questions at various points during the panel, and @lechevaliermalfet​ answered one of the questions correctly. He is now a certified weeb.

               After this panel, we went to another Helen McCarthy panel: Cyberpunk: Peach John – Outlier or Omen? The Disruptive Power of A.I. in the Manga Industry. As I’m sure anyone reading this is aware, artistic work utilizing A.I. is under very close scrutiny and the implications are hotly debated. Given how in-depth McCarthy was able to go on the topic, I was very shocked to learn she had thrown it together in just under three months. And I think she handled the issue fairly even-handedly, explaining both how creators using A.I. can still feel they have truly made art of their own, why traditional artists feel slighted, and routes forward that the industry might take with regards to A.I. If she repeats this panel at other conventions, I highly recommend it.

               We had time to kill after until our next panel. See, originally, after the snafu about the History of Cosplay panel Saturday night, it was supposed to occur at 12 on Sunday. Well, we noticed a slight problem in Guidebook – Grffin Burns was supposed to hosting a Genshin Impact panel in the exact same room, at the exact same time, that Helen McCarthy would allegedly be doing her History of Cosplay panel. Yeah. They’d borked it up again. We spoke to a few different staffers before being informed that Guidebook was in error again and that the panel we wanted to attend would actually be taking place at 2pm.

               Ok, cool. That meant we had a decent amount of time to go back through the dealer area. Check on the finished chalk art, finally get some Wild Bill’s soda, etc. 

I hopped in line for the Crunchyroll booth to try my hand at the free claw machines. And of course, trailers for current Crunchyroll new releases were airing inside the booth so that we had something to watch while we stood in line. It moved at a pretty decent pace, but I think I was probably still in that line for 25 minutes or so. Sadly I didn’t win anything during my turn. I did see others winning and I do think it was a cool way for Crunchyroll to engage with attendees. They were also running a contest online to win a free year of Crunchyroll, so I tried for that as well.

               I wanted to hit up the Nobody is Cosplaying From My Fandom shoot at 1pm, but was a little late because of having been in the Crunchyroll booth. But I still had a lot of fun and got to hop in on a few photos. I really love this concept and I hope it grows to be something that’s done regularly not just at ACen but at other cons as well. Don’t get me wrong – photoshoots for specific fandoms are a great way to connect over a shared love. But the Nobody is Cosplaying From My Fandom shoot meant the opportunity to talk to other attendees about properties that aren’t as familiar and to see cosplay that usually gets lost in the sea of people dressed as the popular stuff.

               After the shoot, it was finally time for the actual History of Cosplay panel with Helen McCarthy – no more scheduling snafus. Now, you might expect the panel to start with the beginning of cosplay at conventions…but McCarthy goes further back than that. All the way back to the days when passion plays were super popular (beyond just Christmas/Easter, which is when most of us in the West are probably familiar with them). Passion plays and ritual costuming then led to more traditional theater, pageantry, and costumed balls. And at costumed balls, people might mimic historical figures or popular characters of literature and comics of the time. In turn, this led to fan costuming at science fiction events. And from there, into cosplay as the phenomenon we know it as today. I think even if you might disagree with McCarthy about the roots of cosplay being buried in passion plays and the like, it’s still a fascinating walk through history and fashion in its own right.  I would recommend attending it, but McCarthy hinted that she may be retiring the panel soon and turn to writing about the subject instead.

               We left the panel and caught a bit of an impromptu dance session going on in the entrance hall of the Stephens Center. We then went to @artbyquinton​‘s booth to say goodbye and to pick up some of his new prints. And once that was done, ACen was over for us.

Oh! And just like during previous ACen weekends, Sunday was a Pokemon Go community day - this time for Fennekin. So, naturally, I was also playing the game while we were doing our final con stuff.

               All in all, it was a good year. Sure, maybe I wasn’t prepared to have leg day each day that weekend, and there were some things that I’ll definitely be noting on the feedback form as needing improvement. But I still had a lot of fun and feel that I got my money’s worth, and that’s what matters. I’m looking forward to hopefully being at ACen 2024.

All of Anime Central 2023 Coverage

Day Zero - Thursday 

Day One - Friday

Day One Cosplayers

Day One Photoshoot - My Little Pony

Day One Photoshoot - MXTX/Danmei

Day Two - Saturday

Day Two Cosplayers

Day Three - Sunday (current post)

Day Three Cosplayers

[dogmouthhorse]

73!

[canmom]

Animation Night 105: Edge

Afternoon comrades, welcome to Year 3 of Animation Night!

We haven’t nearly run out of steam yet - and in the next few weeks I’ve got some fun things to hit you with, like recreating the original My Neighbour Totoro/Grave of the Fireflies double bill, or digging into the origins of the 80s-90s realists with overshadowed gems like Roujin Z and Junkers Come Here. More on that to come...

Tonight though we’ll be taking a different tack: let’s start the year explosively by turning back to our old pal Hiroyuki Imaishi, bearer of the Kanada School torch, last seen on Animation Nights 19, 30 and 54.

...by returning to one of his earliest works, not with Gainax or Trigger but actually Production I.G. hot on the heels of his first distinctive appearance in FLCL. That is Dead Leaves, a production that has a unique look even among Imaishi’s varied works - an entire work in the style of his Gurren Lagann title cards.

It’s definitely a statement of Imaishi’s tastes as an animator: relentlessly energetic, sharp edges and high contrast, eagerly crass humour - here’s a guy with a drill for a dick, here’s a baby born holding two machine guns, don’t take it too seriously. The story follows two amnesiacs who go on a brief crime spree, for which they are thrown into space prison; in the process of trying to break out they discover a bizarre conspiracy to have the prisoners reenact a fairytale about a kind of giant bug thing.

What could we possibly pair it with? Maybe some of Imaishi’s less serious works at Trigger, like Inferno Cop and Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt? Not that Imaishi is ever especially serious, of course. And sure, let’s definitely take this moment to watch Inferno Cop! That’s very much worth talking about.

But actually I have something else in mind: a thematic link, in this case. That is the oddball among 4°C’s works, a film that never really found its audience: the French-Japanese collaboration Mutafukaz...

...which makes tonight’s theme perhaps something like “films too edgy for their own good” - a territory which I personally find fascinating, though it may not be to everyone’s taste, I realise...

4°C we’ve covered many times in this series, in most detail on Animation Night 74, and I have a deep love for many of their films. Mutafukaz comes from a period in the 2010s during which 4°C were involved in a lot of international collaborations such as First Squad (with the Russian studio Molot Entertainment) which are by and large... kind of hit and miss.

As youtuber SteveM documents here (huge thanks to that guy for basically doing all my research), this case was driven by the interest of Ankama Animations, who loved the work of Shōjirō Nishimi and Shinji Kimura on the environments of Tekkonkinkreet and the opening to the animatrix-like package film Batman Gotham Knight.

Ankama are a French studio who in the 2000s began to make animation, games and comics; their best known work is surely the series Wakfu, a tie-in to their computer game and one of the early wave of anime-influenced Western productions which makes distinctive use of Flash-based vector animation. Their usual style puts a huge emphasis on exaggerated shapes and saturated colours, and it has that odd smoothness of computer inbetweening, but combined with the exaggerated poses and smears of the latter Kanada school...

Possibly I will write more about Wakfu another time! In any case, Mutafukaz, also known internationally as MTFZ, adapts another of Ankama’s comics by artist Guillaume “Run” Renard, about which very little information is available in English - but hey, it does have a TVTropes page, and you can read it on scan sites like readcomiconline.

Like many bandes desinées, the comics have absolutely lavish art; here is a sampling:

The earliest forms of the comic were apparently inspired by kids in halloween costumes, but evidently as it evolved the impulse behind it congealed ito a fascination with Hispanic gang iconography and the narrative of being poor in a big city but also ‘men in black’ conspiracy theories and alien invasion; its ‘Dark Meat City’ setting is a fantasy metropolis on the Mexican border built by survivors of an earthquake-destroyed LA. In fact, the first vision to exist was not the comic but a film: Renard directed a short CG film version of Mutafukaz in 2002, which played in various festivals, and you can see it here...

...but honestly, don’t lol. The film opens quite strongly with a cheesy monologue about Hitler’s V2 rockets and some pans over a series of dark cityscapes in distorted perspectives, but really struggles once the CG main characters are introduced; the voice acting in English is awkward (in script, delivery and recording), and the rigs aren’t really up to the kind of action they want to portray. It really strongly feels like something that would succeed on Newgrounds around this period, but with slightly more elaborate animation, especially lets say when the music kicks in lmao.

The full film is a different story altogether: Ankama were able to bring a high budget to the project and let it cook for five years, while 4C could bring back most of the same incredibly talented team that made Tekkonkinkreet so great.  Which makes the final film a strange sort of cultural relay: the image of LA constructed by a white Frenchman, interpreted lavishly by an idiosyncratic team of largely Japanese animators. So we get to see this very B-movie premise given really unreasonably strong direction in all areas: colour and sound design, use of 3D, and general choreography.

As SteveM discusses well in his video, the weakness of the film is precisely that telephone game of cultural influences; despite the research the filmmakers did (including visiting LA to record sound), it broadly come across more as a ‘pastiche of American culture’ informed mostly by the picture of LA received on the news and in American films. Which is to say: though there’s an enormous amount of craft that elevates the original material, and it’s not really malicious in its intent, it’s still a caricature of a more complex reality. Here’s the video again in case you didn’t click on it last time:

So overall, I expect this one to be ‘challenging’, but interesting nonetheless, and I would like to see it. Will be interested to see what everyone makes of it.

Now, let’s come back around to Imaishi...

At the time of Dead Leaves, Imaishi had been for the last few years steadily building up his distinctive identity at Gainax, directing episodes and doing key animation for many of their post-Eva shows like FLCL and Diebuster. But it wasn’t all robots or Gainax; he also directed the ending for Osamu Kobayashi’s adaptation of the josei manga Paradise Kiss, and as you can see, it certainly looks like his style: the exaggerated shapes and poses, reduced framerate, distorted perspective, angular shapes and heavy blacks...

Imaishi and Kobayashi would collaborate again on both Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking.

As he came into his own as a director, we see the development of his heavily referential, otaku-literate style that leans heavily on the works of Yoshinori Kanada (AN 62), though I really must go back and expand this at some point) and Osamu Dezaki (Animation Night 95), as Matteo Watzky wrote in an article I keep coming back to.

As time went by, however, Imaishi has come to embody this kind of approach. The clearest example of it is probably one of his early works as episode director, episode 3 of Gainax’s Abenobashi Mahô Shotengai. The episode is Imaishi’s parody/homage to classical anime SF, from Space Battleship Yamato and Captain Harlock to Gundam and many, many other famous or lesser-known series. In terms of animation, it’s a constant display of Kanada-style animation, and sometimes an impressive one. But this episode also displays an incredibly crass and unrefined sense of humor, with tons of fanservice and scatological jokes. This, in itself, isn’t problematic, but what must be noted is that both registers are constantly at the same level in the episode, and that the animation style is the exact same. In other words, the omnipresent Kanada-style animation seems like it’s only there for comedy: the talent displayed by the animators doesn’t seem like it’s there as a show of skill, but only as a parody of itself.

I don’t know if I fully agree with this view of Imaishi’s works; at the very least since a lot more people know Imaishi than Kanada or Dezaki, his works have to work effectively on their own rights rather than being read purely as parody. All the same, I think it’s vital to understanding Imaishi’s career to have this context. Watzky’s article goes on to make a detailed analysis of Imaishi’s mixed animation techniques in KLK and Promare, do read it!

Anyway, in 2004, Imaishi finally got to direct a 45 minute OVA... not with Gainax, who were at this point working on Re: Cutie Honey (for which Imaishi directed one episode), but with Production I.G. You can read about the origins of I.G. in Matteo’s incredibly in-depth article on Patlabor 2; they were were at this point a very large studio: in 2004 they were also making four TV shows (GitS:SAC, Cromartie High School, Windy Tales and Otogi Zoshi) and Oshii’s GitS 2: Innocence (AN 39).

Alas, I have not been able to find any detailed writing on how this film came to be! Who at I.G. decided to take on a feature film by the rising star Imaishi, what was the inspiration for the story? I just don’t know. From the credits, we can see that Imaishi had a firm hand on the production, not just serving as overall director and storyboarder, but also the character designer and animation director, meaning he must have personally corrected most if not all of the cuts in the film.

One obvious question to me is, how does Takeshi Koike (AN 19) fit into this story? By this point in history, Koike had established his own identity with Trava: Fist Planet, World Record and the Afro Samurai pilot, not to mention his sequence on Katsuhito Ishii’s The Taste of Tea (Toku Tuesday 8). The stylistic similarities between Koike’s work and Dead Leaves feel very strong, particularly in the use of extreme perspective distortion and heavy black shadow shapes... and in fact, it turns out Koike animated an impressive sequence on Dead Leaves, so not only must Imaishi have seen his work, but also invited him to work on the film. In fact, it went both ways, with Imaishi doing key animation on Koike’s Redline a few years later: not surprisingly his cut opens with a visual allusion to Lupin III and is packed with Kanada-isms such as ‘liquid fire’ light flares. So far as I can tell, they largely parted ways since that point, or at least I can’t find an instance where they’re co-credited.

Another major key animator was of course Yoh Yoshinari, who would for years after be something like Imaishi’s right-hand man, animating some of the most striking sequences on Gurren Lagann and most of his work at Trigger. On Dead Leaves, Yoshinari created this incredible sequence.

Anyway, for the other part, let’s fast forward a good many years. As You Know, Imaishi directed his magnum opus Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in 2007, then the more comedic Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt in 2010, at which point time came to leave Gainax behind and found Studio Trigger in 2011 (following in the footsteps of Anno, who had left Gainax to found Khara to create the Rebuild of Evangelion films in 2006). Why this mass exodus? I’m honestly not sure, exactly - perhaps a desire for a greater sense of control from these two determinedly individual directors, or perhaps some kind of internal conflict.

The work we’re interested in here is in the first few years of the studio, where they were heavily reliant on crowdfunding: the ‘motion comic’ Inferno Cop, this term meaning that it was heavily limited animation, mostly static images with pans and even stock clips of explosions, again leaning in to the Newgrounds-esque style which emphasises a frenetic pace, extreme poses and a chaotic sense of humour. Directed by Akira Amemiya with Imaishi’s supervision, it seems like an immediate successor to Panty and Stocking, with a similar sense of machine-gun “vulgar and indecent” humour, albeit more violence than sex jokes. All in all, it sounds a lot like Imaishi’s short on the Animator Expo, Sex and Violence with Machspeed.

So. I think that will suffice for the writeup. Tonight our theme is essentially ‘films that are kind of stupid and too edgy for their own good yet nevertheless have crazy good animation’. I think it’s gonna be fun!

We’ll be starting shortly, with the stream going live at about 8pm UK time (just over an hour from this post), and the movies beginning about 30 minutes after that, all at our usual https://twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see you there!

[zeroraiser]

The people who make fun of High Guardian Spice for not looking like a traditional modern anime because it’s on Crunchyroll have clearly never actually watched any of the more visually interesting looking anime besides the most generic moe garbage. Like have any of y’all ever seen: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt? Or how about the majority of Studio Trigger’s work? Gregory Horror Show? What about fucking Astro Boy? You know? The Originator of Anime? How about the The Big O? FLCL? Literally every Ghibli film? Y’all are gonna end up making me like the show out of pure spite at this point.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

Comparing ATLA’s Jet to Cowboy Bebop’s Spike

(this is so late, but. Happy birthday @the-hot-zone​, hope you had an amazing day) 

In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is one of the greatest shows ever created. It hits a lot of my personal favorite attributes in a TV show: cowboys, fantastic music, absolutely spectacular animation, really deep themes and characters with rich inner lives, worldbuilding that’s thought out. Simply put, it’s a masterpiece. 

I started watching Bebop this summer, at the height of the ATLA Renaissance, and the first thing I noticed about protagonist Spike Spiegel is that he looked a hell of a lot like Jet from ATLA. And it wasn’t just the looks either: like Jet, Spike is the leader of a ragtag group of misfits living on the fringes of society. Like Jet, Spike is a smooth talker. Like Jet, Spike is compassionate and cares for other people, and like Jet, the world has hardened Spike to the point where his virtues can still lead him down the wrong path. And while Jet isn’t named for Spike, there’s a character in Bebop named Jet (he sort of plays the right hand person role that Smellerbee plays for Jet in ATLA.) They’re not completely similar--Spike isn’t fighting for anybody’s liberation, whereas for Jet that’s a core aspect of his character--but it was enough to make me wonder about how Jet was designed and how much influence Bebop had on his character design and on ATLA as a whole, and whether looking at Spike can illuminate some of the conversations we’ve been having about Jet. 

A little about the inspiration and process of ATLA: Bryan and Michael were working on shows like Family Guy when they decided they wanted to make something more sincere and more cinematic. They were both really inspired by anime. Bryan said “Back in the late '90s I was getting pretty disillusioned with working on sitcoms -- then I saw Princess Mononoke and I was emboldened. My heart was so much closer to that kind of story, those kinds of characters and that type of tone. After that, Cowboy Bebop really inspired us in terms of being a great example of an epic series that had a wide breadth of tones. Then FLCL came along and rewrote the rules for everything, as far as I'm concerned!” I haven’t seen FLCL, I’ll admit, but having seen both Bebop and Princess Mononoke--yeah, I get that. Both are incredible pieces of art that, for me personally, make me want to push myself as an artist, and I cannot recommend both enough if you haven’t seen them already. 

So, Bryan and Michael decide they want to make something inspired by shows like Bebop and movies like Princess Mononoke, they get a pilot order from Nickelodeon and, as is custom at the time, they start reaching out to East Asian animation studios to help them with the animation. This video is a great source for how ATLA in particular interacted in this environment, but suffice to say that Bryan built a relationship with the studio that did a lot of work for ATLA, JM Animation, and gave them a lot of creative freedom in making the visuals of the show. This included designing Jet and the rest of the Freedom Fighters. 

[ID: An image of Jet from ATLA from the shoulders up against a sky background fading from blue at the top to white at the bottom. He had dark skin, shaggy black hair, black eyes, eyebrows turned way up, a smirk on his face, and some wheat in his mouth. He is wearing a red jacket with a gray popped collar. End ID] 

[ID: An image of Spike from Cowboy Bebop from the shoulders up against a sky blue background with trees behind him. He has shaggy dark brown hair that has a slight bit more curl in it than Jet’s, dark brown eyes, light skin, and a closed mouth smile on his face. He is wearing a blue suit with a yellow shirt that has a popped collar, and a skinny black tie/ End ID] 

So, let’s look at the character design. Both Spike and Jet have these long, angular faces, shaggy dark hair, long necks, broad shoulders, dark eyes, some popped collar element to their attire, etc. While both characters are pretty tall and lanky, Spike’s height is more immediately obvious than Jet’s--in fact, I wouldn’t think of Jet as a tall character had I not seen some fandom height comparisons. The most obvious and immediate differences between how the characters physically look are their clothes, which are very different (likely due to the setting--ATLA is set in a proto-industrial war-torn society and Jet in particular has had to scavenge his clothes from Fire Nation troops, while Bebop is a space epic set in the far future), the lack of mouth wheat for Spike, Spike’s incredibly normal looking eyebrows versus Jet’s adorable long division eyebrows, and, of course, their skin tones. Colorism is something that people bring up a lot when talking about Jet’s character, and I have to wonder why Jet, a character that was so clearly inspired by this light-skinned character who was morally ambiguous in Bebop, was made darker-skinned when explicitly coded as a “villain” in ATLA. 

In fact, colorism is a super important aspect of how Jet and Spike’s stories are told. To its credit, ATLA has two MCs (Sokka and Katara) with dark skin (not that the fanartists who whitewash them notice) while Bebop has just one (Ed). However, it’s important to note that Sokka and Katara are each portrayed in ways that Aang or other lighter-skinned characters in the show simply aren’t. For example, despite both characters being literal teenagers, they are sexualized within the text of the show. Another example of the colorism in ATLA is, of course, Jet, a Brown boy leading a resistance against oppressive colonialist imperialist forces, being so unambiguously vilified. Yes, within the text, Jet has some sense of complexity, especially in Book 2, but even that is undermined by his death at the hands of the Dai Li. Jet is never given the subjectivity of a character like Zuko. In fact, it’s pretty clear that Jet’s redemption and subsequent death happens when it does to demonstrate what Zuko is capable of if he makes the right choice. Whether or not this is a good decision writing-wise is another discussion, but the fact of the matter is that in using Jet to further Zuko’s arc, bryke used a Brown teenage boy/victim of imperialist violence to prop up the narrative of a light-skinned prince/perpetrator of imperial violence. This is not to say that Zuko shouldn’t have been redeemed or that Jet shouldn’t have died or that the narrative shouldn’t have dedicated time and attention to Zuko’s story, but it is to say that ultimately, the writers of the show decided that Jet’s subjectivity was a tool to further Zuko’s actualization. 

Contrast this to Spike. Bebop is about a lot of things, but a core part of it is exploring Spike’s backstory and way of looking at the world. It’s part of what makes the show the show. It’s the thing that keeps you liking the guy even when he says or does something absolutely unconscionable. Nothing in the show is more important than Spike’s subjectivity. The show may have individual episodes that focus on the other main characters, but it’s pretty clear that it’s really *about* Spike. Where does Spike come from? What is his obsession with the past? Why do all these people want to kill him? Who is Julia? These are all prescient questions that I had as a viewer of Bebop, and these were questions that were not only important to understanding Spike Spiegel, but to understanding the narrative that the writers, director, and animators are telling. Bebop is nothing without Spike’s subjectivity, and the people behind the show invest in his narrative even though he does some pretty horrible things! (kills many people, is part of a crime syndicate at one point, says some pretty misogynistic crap, hell, the whole concept of the show is that he and his buddies hunt people down for money.) As I said before, Spike is morally ambiguous, an antihero, and the people behind Bebop run with that, because that is an integral part of the story that they’re telling. 

You could certainly argue that ATLA, being a show for children, needs clear heroes and villains, to be unambiguous in its depiction of right and wrong. And to an extent that would be correct. But let’s not forget that ATLA is not shy in its depiction of morally ambiguous characters. That’s an integral part of what the show is. Characters like Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee are beloved despite (or perhaps because of) their complex moral frameworks. Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee in particular move between designations of villain, victim, and hero pretty fluidly (Iroh and Azula are two other conversations in themselves.) I personally am okay, and in fact delighted, to have Zuko, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in the show because I think their stories and the ways that they move between evil, good, and morally gray are incredibly compelling. We know why they act the way they do, and we can condemn or validate their actions while always knowing exactly where they’re coming from. 

But then I see Jet. Jet, whose village was burned down by the Fire Nation. Jet, who survived by himself and helped 5 other people survive along the way, while leading an organized resistance against the Fire Nation on wits alone. Jet, who somehow ended up in Ba Sing Se, his new family cut in half, wanting to start over. So much of him is a blank slate. Where Spike in Bebop, or Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in ATLA, get fleshed out, have the writers convey specific information that helps the audience understand their actions and motivations, even if they’re wrong, Jet never gets that sort of care in his narrative. Jet never gets to be the center of ATLA, even for a moment, even in his own death. There’s always something more pressing, something more meaningful, than Jet. You could argue (I certainly would) that the show would be better if we spent more time with him, if the writers cared to understand him, but unlike Bebop and Spike, the show doesn’t revolve around the audience understanding Jet. The story is coherent without him. In book 3, despite the fact that Jet sacrificed his life for them, the Gaang only brings up Jet once, and that’s to condemn him. Jet’s story is a tragedy, an important one, but only insofar as it props up other pieces of the narrative. And that’s the most tragic part of it. 

[bunny-hoodlum]

Thank you @dayseternal-blog for the tag! Lolz at my lateness!

Favorite Anime: Naruto, YuYu Hakusho, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, Paranoid Agent, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, One Piece, Casshern Sins, Soul Eater, Space Dandy, Made in Abyss, Your Lie in April, ERASED, The Ancient Magi's Bride, Somali and the Forest Spirit, Asobi Asobase, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Deca-Dence, Sleeping Princess in The Demon's Castle, Beastars, BNA, Wonder Egg Priority, Heaven's Design Team, ODDTaxi, My Hero Academia.

(I still haven't seen To Your Eternity yet, but I know it's going to be a new favorite. Oh crap, The Great Pretender is another one on my list. Also, I still need to see HunterxHunter (2011), Bungo Stray Dogs (s1), Violet Evergarden, Baccano!, Durarara, 91 Days, Tatami Galaxy...)

Least Favorite Anime: Lord Marksman and Vanadis. That's about the only anime I've actually watched that I hated throughout. (My SO was into it back when he was a baby weeb lmao. I'm still trying to show him the way). Otherwise, for anime that I've never watched but know I wouldn't like or others that were okay but just not for me, that would require a whole-ass essay and I won't get into that nonsense lol.

Last Anime You Watched: Demon Slayer! Ep 15! It's super cliffhanger-y though. :( The pacing feels kind of floaty. Idk if that's just me. XD

Favorite Anime Movie: Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Laputa: Castle In The Sky, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, Steamboy, Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, From Up On Poppy Hill, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, Naruto: The Last, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, The Boy And The Beast, (spot reserved for Wolf Children), (spot reserved for Satoshi Kon's films), Ride Your Wave, Weathering With You, A Silent Voice, Kick-heart, Tekkonkinkreet, MFKZ, and that's all I can think of right now.

Anime You Cried Hardest At: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Ride Your Wave, Your Lie in April. I recently broke down over the first episode of Let's Make a Mug! (embarrassing in hindsight lol, it's not angsty at all. I'm just a 'broken' artist who doesn't make art anymore, so something like that hit me lol. I could relate to the MC's late mother who apparently became so obsessed with her craft that her health failed. #artgoals lololol!) I'll report back when I watch Violet Evergarden and Blue Period. ;P A Silent Voice made me FEEL things, but I think I froze my heart during the moments that should've gut-punched me the most, tehe. :P

Your Comfort Anime: Heaven's Design Team was my winter 2021 comfort anime. Asobi Asobase was another one early 2020 for me, but I can't get that first time feeling back. XD Sleeping Princess in the Demon's Castle is my other one right now, though I only have 2 episodes left, and now I badly want the manga. T_T I think ODDTaxi is a comfort anime as well. The banter-heavy dialogue is amazing, the opening theme is just the best. Everyone just has chemistry, I love it. And of course, it's an Urban slice-of-life with a slowburn corruption plot, so like, it's just really fun and interesting.

Favorite Anime Character: Naruto Uzumaki, Hinata Hyuuga and Hanabi Hyuuga, Dola (from Castle in the Sky), Haruka Haruhara, Mamimi Samejima, Usopp, Vash the Stampede, Maka Albarn, Riko (Made in Abyss), Legoshi, Kanamori/Venus and Unabara/Neptune (Heaven's Design Team), Tsuyu Asui/Froppy and Ochaco Uraraka, Nezuko. I should have more, but that's all for now.

Shoujo or Shounen: Shounen. (But tbh, Seinen > Josei > Shounen > Shoujo)

If You Could Shift Into An Anime Universe, Which One?: As a kid, I always wanted to live inside of Kiki's Delivery Service or Pokemon. As an adult, though? I'm pretty boring right now, haha. I wish I could be a club member inside of Let's Make a Mug! I've tried googling where I can do pottery for funsies, but all I find are Adult Classes. Like... that's not the same thing! T o T

I tag @spaciousignatius!

[lestvt]

wasn’t tagged or anything, i just felt like doing one of these lol

rules: tag people you wanna get to know better!

your name and then what you would have named yourself: j.j.; what those j’s stand for is none of your concern. if i was going to name myself it would be something sick, like godkiller or edward  

astrological sign (sun/moon/rising if you know): im a pisces and i do not believe in this shit at all because its literally never right about me

when did you join tumblr and why?: 2010-11ish, i was like 15 so no further explanation needed

top 5 fandoms: the vampire chronicles, hannibal (really the only two im active in currently), harry potter, tolkien, stranger things, etc.   

top 5 favorite films: alien (1979), aliens (1986), silence of the lambs (1991),  interview with the vampire (1994), and the descent (2005) ((this list was honestly so hard to narrow down lol))  

go to song when you want to Feel something: this changes a lot, but right now it’s seven wonders by fleetwood mac or alt. i wanna get better by bleachers 

what’s your religion or faith if you have one?: im agnostic and my faith is in the fact that i will always despise organized religion lmaooo 

a song that makes you feel seen: gold rush by death cab for cutie or fast talk by houses

if you could have any career: archaeologist, AKA that thing im majoring in lol also a writer but im already that (unpaid) 

do you have a type: yeah, smart people who care about their future 

what does your heart/soul yearn for: to be left the fuck alone so i can write/make art in peace, but also to study dead people  

if you had to describe yourself in 5 words to someone who doesn’t know you: overbearing, passionate, nerdy, loud, outre 

favorite subject in school: history and lit. 

where does your soul feel most at home: walking along a large body of water at night by myself 

top 5 fictional characters: this is also extremely hard lol... lestat de lioncourt (the vampire chronicles), louis de pointe du lac (the vampire chronicles), brian kinney (queer as folk), haruhara haruko (flcl), hannibal lecter    

top 3 moments in a show that made you ugly cry: the ending of the anime code geass, the ending of season 2 of hannibal, and ...........idk i dont cry at TV very often unless its queer eye or a show about dog rehabilitation   

the earth, the sun, the moon or the stars: the stars, so unattainable-y beautiful and shrouded in mystery 

favorite kind of weather: summer thunderstorms (as long as im not working)

top 3 characters you kin with: louis de pointe du lac (oof), will graham (harder oof), bulma from DBZ (nice!) 

favorite medium of art: does writing count? unless you mean visual, in which case i prefer pencil or digital 

introvert/extrovert/ambivert: im an introvert with extroverted tendencies when im in a manic mood 

a favorite literary quote: im literally not about to go looking for quotes, its not like i have a pocket book of them on hand or something wtf 

some of your favorite books: interview with the vampire (my favorite book of all time), the vampire lestat, the harry potter series, macbeth, and nonfiction, but honestly i mostly read fanfiction and comics/manga these days

if you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?: somewhere secluded but within driving distance of a big city, possibly near the ocean and/or mountains 

if you could live in any time in history when would it be?: the present, because im mentally ill and also queer and id prefer not to be killed and/or institutionalized lmaooo... but purely for the aesthetics? the victorian era

if you could play any instrument masterfully it would be: i play piano, clarinet, and bari saxophone (and a lil guitar), but if i could actually be good at any of those that would be cool lol. otherwise... violin (i used to play it but stopped at age 14ish) 

if you have one, what mythological god or goddess do you feel a connection to?: artemis and/or anubis  

oh my god this is so long but LASTLY, favorite recent selfie in your camera roll: me in my casual will graham cosplay for halloween this year: [REDACTED]

tagging: @murdoc , @wicked-felina , @i-want-my-iwtv , @hidethesilverwaresblog , @chietozier , @lucaroyale , @freshsunberries

idk if any of y'all do this kind of thing, but just in case... ;)

feel free to omit the selfie one if it makes you uncomfortable

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - VLADLOVE

At least it can really only go up from here!

VLADLOVE is...an anomaly. Basically nothing about it makes any sense, and I’m honestly wondering if this was a real episode I just watched or if I actually just dreamed it.

Let’s start from the outside - despite being created and directed by the very experienced, highly-lauded Mamoru Oshii, and animated by Production IG, VLADLOVE’s direction can best be summarized as “yeah, I’ve seen Monogatari and FLCL, I’m pretty sure I know how to direct anime now”. Strange color grading choices are all over the place and don’t have much in the way of rhyme or reason, and the color grading on the characters doesn’t ever match the background, so it never looks like they’re actually part of the scene behind them. The character designs are...

And overall, the project looks honestly overanimated. The key frames are pretty ugly, but there’s a lot of what would, in most other situations, be called “sakuga” if not for the things they’re animating being hideous and uninspired. This might have worked, say, twenty five years ago, but not in 2021.

The plot is really not much better. The central character is a girl who obsessively donates blood, a character trait which will be relatable to basically nobody because it doesn’t sound like something anybody would actually do. She meets a vampire chick with two different personalities depending on her hunger level, and decides “hey, we both like blood! I can take care of her” but by the end of the episode starts referring to the vampire as her girlfriend, and the two of them are helped by...the school nurse.

Yes, that’s her in the foreground. This character basically made my brain melt. I had to pause the episode for ten minutes just to unpack this costume design. Why does the dress zip up in the front? Why is the zipper so low? What exactly is holding it up? Is it taped to her boobs? (And, the obvious one: why does she wear this to work at a high school?) The rabbit hole goes deeper, because apparently in addition to being a high school nurse, she’s also a scientist who studies rare blood types? For some reason? And she convinces our main character to start a blood donation club to keep her vampire girlfriend fed.

Am I being punked? I keep having flashbacks to Punch Line, a show that also had a nonsensical first episode, but Punch Line had stuff to latch onto, the weirdness was apparent in-universe, and here, Vlad Love is played completely straight. The direction is trying far too hard, the universe has shattered my suspension of disbelief, and the whole thing looks like it was a giant waste of money and talent.

What a terrible way to start 2021, but at least you can make the argument that this episode actually went up on YouTube two weeks ago, so it’s technically from 2020. Just give me this. I can’t accept that this is actually the first thing I watched this year.