#it's a relatively rare thing to see even in western media but in ANIME?

[x-i-l-verify]

#this is what keeps me coming back to it too #I'll take astonishingly Christian anime for 500 Alex

Trigun fucking destroys me, okay.

It's about persisting through the most horrific obstacles imaginable, and never losing hope for yourself and others. It's about the fruit your efforts bear, but it doesn't ignore the ugliness of the suffering you endure. It doesn't sweep it under the rug to give you a happy ending.

As a jaded millennial, I get a bit tired of stories where everything turns out fine because the heroes tried hard. Most stories gloss over the repercussions of failure. They tell us it's all simply a means to an end, and that end is what matters. Overcoming your obstacle matters. Winning matters.

Trigun doesn't do this.

Vash gets hurt (gross understatement). He's ostracized, bullied, threatened, haunted, forced to see the darkest underbelly of humanity. He's subjected to the worst parts of life that are grotesquely ruthless, unforgiving, hopeless. He's forced to reconcile a lot of his goals (like never killing anyone), but not the core of his beliefs.

Not once does he falter in his trust that people are capable of good, that we all deserve that chance to be. He never has a revelation that shakes his faith in humanity, despite constantly being given every reason to. He's the irritatingly optimistic anime protagonist who looks at impossible odds and says "everything will be alright", the way no one can in real life because it never works out that way for us.

And it doesn't for him, either.

Vash does his best, believes in himself, and fails. over and over and over again. He loses everything--loved ones, memories, autonomy. He loses constantly. He's your unrealistically positive hero, being dealt realistically unfavorable hands.

And still, he persists. He never truly wins. Because we never truly win. Life has no happy ending like a story does.

He never truly wins, and yet, he can still find happiness. He meets friends, enjoys good food, watches people love fiercely in both blessing and hardship. He hits unbelievable lows that don't keep him from finding highs. Because he never stops trying to be the best of what he sees in humanity. Because every little bit counts. He never stops believing in humans--believing in you.

Trigun grabs you by the face and stares directly at you. It says "I see you, I see your pain, how much you struggle. I see how sometimes no matter how hard you try, things don't work out. Life isn't a fairy tale. I see how your kindness can come back to hurt you, hurt others. I see you, and I'm proud of you. Life is worth living with love in your heart not because we win, but because we try. We all try. Never stop trying to be kind."

Trigun shows you the cruel reality of life, and leaves you feeling good about it.

I don't know a single piece of media that's able to do that.

[meruz]

maybe a weird question, but does the show that your backgrounds appear in ever make you feel differently about your work? like as an artist im sure youre pretty much always proud of the finished product but if the show that uses them is one you dont like does it ever.. make you feel weird?? or is it still just like "hey, i did that!"

nah..Not any weirder than posting art in general feels LOL. the thing is, liking a tv show as entertainment is different from liking it as a workplace which is also different from liking it as idk… an art object to put in my portfolio. I’m not going to pretend there isn’t overlap there like if I had to kind of draw it out (in more ways than one haha)...

So theres a lot of push and pull between factors. Its VERY common for artists to have shows they enjoyed working on that they wouldn’t personally enjoy watching and vice versa. And for me personally? I’m a glass half full kind of guy so even amongst mixed feelings I tend to focus on the good parts and I've liked almost every show I've worked on, come out feeling pretty good about my work almost all the time. 

I’m lucky though. I’ve never had to stay at a job with truly heinous working conditions. I’ve always had the privilege of enough resources (savings, parents house to fall back on, etc) to quit and find something new which is something not all people have. 

And I guess I would feel weird/bad about my work if it turned out to be used for like… a horrendous hate crime or something? Like if god forbid I ended up somehow…presumably accidentally?? working on the 21st century’s version of Birth of a Nation???? But (knock on wood) I like to think the chances of that in animation are pretty slim LOL or at the very least I'd be able to see the red flags ahead of time and get out of there…. one of the good/lame things about mass media is that it’s supremely moderate like it can’t be transgressive or radical (on either end of the political spectrum) or else it risks losing profit. And on top of that, animation is one of the least spontaneous storytelling mediums. just by nature of how much coordination and planning that has to be done ahead of time for something as simple as moving a character across the screen. Backgrounds in particular are relatively middle-late in the animation pipeline. every show runs a little differently but normally by the time we're working on bgs the story, boards, and characters are like... 70-90% locked in? So it’s pretty rare to be working on a show only to later be surprised by whats on screen when it airs.

I do know that south park turns on a dime and makes episodes slapdash in like one week but uh I like to think they're the exception not the rule LOL. most western animation will take about a year per ep from outline to final export.

anyways thanks for sending a thoughtful ask as opposed to something patronizing or obnoxiously leading like "im so sorry you had to work on such a shitty show" which ive been getting a bit of lately.

[lewa358]

Game Retrospective: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Note: this post contains vague spoilers.

Screw it, I love horror games now.

I was always a bit of a coward growing up. I remember refusing to watch the first Harry Potter flick because the three-headed doggo in the trailer scared me too much. But I’m much older now, and with that age came maturity--at least, enough maturity to slap on a VR headset t creep through a dilapidated old house filled with people and monsters that want to do god knows what to me.

So I’ve beaten this. My second RE game after 4 (third if you count Leon A as beating REmake 2), though I played quite a bit of the first Revelations before the final boss decided to be obnoxious, and that shitty version of RE1. But that doesn’t really go into how brave I’ve become, at least when it comes to experiencing horror media.

See, most RE games are silly nonsense. Gory, dark, and powerfully atmospheric, sure—but also remorselessly goofy. Be it the hokey FMVs and voice acting of the first game, Claire’s silly outfit in the third, the demon Napoleon Bonaparte in the fourth, or the gonzo action gameplay and frenetic pacing of Revelations, this franchise has only rarely be truly horrifying. Don’t misunderstand: these games can absolutely be scary as hell when they want to. But the tone of the series as a whole has veered more towards the silly than the scary, especially after 4.

Which is why 7 felt so radically different. Damn near all of the earlier games’ inherent goofiness suddenly vanished, and instead we have a story of a guy trapped in a house with insane, seemingly cannibalistic freaks that refuse to die. The rooms ooze with grotesque detail, and the story is told in cutscenes that are as serious and polished in their animation and delivery as any western game. The whole thing is in first-person as well!

The gameplay is a nice change as well. What I really liked about RE2’s remake is that, in terms of level design, it felt halfway between an adventure game and a Metroidvania. You had to explore and backtrack across a cramped, claustrophobic environment to collect items that are used in other rooms to solve puzzles and explore more of the environment. Unlike an adventure game, these “puzzles” are usually relatively simple, but unlike a Metroidvania, the items rarely granted you extra abilities. And unlike in either genre, you had to carefully manage inventory space, ensuring that you had enough room for both key items and gameplay stuff like ammunition, weapons, and healing items.

And there’s also the enemies. Strong, brutal enemies, but the most reliable way to kill them is to use your incredibly limited ammunition, so simply running from them is a legitimate strategy.

I like that general design, and it’s here in RE7—mostly.

See, RE7 barely has normal enemies. For the first 6-ish hours of the game, your only opponents (with like 2 exceptions) are the Bakers--fully fleshed-out NPCs who are either completely unkillable or tied to a boss fight. This honestly works very well—it ensures that the enemies you fight are genuinely intimidating. That first house is horribly creepy, with fantastic detail crammed everywhere, and quite a lot of fiendishly creative tricks played on our woeful protagonist.

But after a while the game gleefully reconstructs the previous games’ approach, and honestly I liked that too. The game is great at both slow-paced, spooky exploration and relatively linear gunslinging, so I welcomed the change, especially given how hard the first half of the game was, and how satisfying the guns were to fire. And those boss fights are brilliant! Chainsaw duel! Running a guy over with a car in his own garage! Whatever the hell Jack was, with the upside-down head!

Now all this is great on a flat screen…but in VR, it’s a completely different beast. Being able to look around the Baker mansion and its related areas by moving your actual neck, and seeing it all in stereoscopic 3D, is wonderfully and disturbingly immersive. Being able to aim by looking at enemies is also a blast. It fully confirmed that VR is my favorite way to play games like this…even if the implementation here is drowning in caveats:

The resolution and other graphical capabilities of PSVR are extremely limited. This isn’t a problem in graphically simple games like SUPERHOT VR or games designed from the ground up for the platform like Astro Bot (which is still my favorite VR game)—but in a game as intricately detailed as RE7, you run into a lot of problems. All the character models look janky, with jagged edges and other limited details. Still incredibly immersive, but the issues are there.

As mentioned, you aim with your neck (or, in other words, moving the headset) rather than pointing a controller. The former is fine, but the latter would be much more immersive, and allow me to shoot without looking at these hideous beasts. There is, of course, no support for the Move or Aim controllers. Playing with the standard PS4 controller works perfectly fine, and aiming with my neck is definitely better than aiming with the control stick (or, dare I say it, a mouse), but it’s an odd choice that few VR games make.

Many times, the game switches from in-engine cinematics to pre-rendered ones. The former work in VR…but the latter do not. This is intended to be a subtle switch, but it’s jarringly obvious in VR, since it suddenly goes from a full immersive environment to a flat screen. This has the effect of lessening the impact of some twists and scripted sequences, especially in the final boss fight. 

Despite how seriously the game takes itself, I was never truly horrified like I was with, say, SOMA. The game never really dives into any deep, thematically resonant territory—at least, not themes so simplistic, or maybe just subtle, that I dismissed them outright. It’s just Spooky House With Kooky Killers, The Game. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but I honestly feel like it should be more. The game is so damn good at being a Spooky House game, and does it so artfully, that I feel that something deeper should be easy for the game’s writers.

Like, what is there? Parental abandonment? You can’t really claim that’s a theme when the “parent” is an evil creator and manager of B.O.W.s and the “child” is an explicitly insane eldritch abomination. Those things completely ruin any chance of the story working as an allegory.

But still a great game besides that.

Game notes:

Developer/Publisher: Capcom

Time to beat: about 10 hours

Got Ending 1, normal difficulty, playing mostly in VR

Header image from the game’s Steam page; other images are screenshots from the game’s PC “Beginning Hour” Demo (and thus are not representative of how the game looked when I played it, especially in VR).

[things2mustdo]

I heard a family member make remarks on the ‘victims’ of Hurricane Florence, who knew well in advance the possible horrors which came crawling their way. But were those who decided to stay victims given the warnings? They also espoused, essentially, that rescue teams shouldn’t put their lives at risk for those who remained in harm’s way.

This brought me back to a conversation with a man who has been big on situational awareness in terms of avoiding assailants who aim to pierce your heart and rob you while you lie in a pool of your own blood. He asked this question about what one does when in a dark alley and you see a suspicious character coming your way? My response was something to the extent of whether or not I even had to be in the dark alley? That was his point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHq4dbQBa14

Now, I’m not remotely suggesting rescue teams avoid doing their job, but it did get me back to situational awareness and understanding the justice brought about when you are foolish enough to venture into a dark alley on the wrong side of town, or remaining in Florida when you damn well knew the potential risk involved.

That got me thinking about the recent political violence and acts of domestic terrorism caused by Black Lives Matter and Anti-Fascists. So, in regards to our contemporary state of the political and cultural arena, and what surely awaits us in the next US presidential election, here are some simple, basic tips about situational awareness and being prepared in case civil unrest breaks out.

1. Understand The Baseline Of Your Environment

Political rallies across the US demonstrate the capacity of violence and the willingness to assault in ruthless manners. Both men and women of more right-wing views have been assaulted, been threatened to be raped, have their families killed, get doxxed, have dead animals thrown at their living quarters, had their finances threatened, etc. It’s a goddamn nightmare on the more North Side of America than the South Side, where not everyone has a bamboo stick up their ass.

There are many great articles written on situational awareness. And that’s key: situation. The environment, in a general sense, has a baseline. It’s the basic overall feel and operation of that set area.

For example, you go to the mall. What’d you expect to see, generally speaking? People walking and talking, laughing and usually carrying a bag or two. It would, in this context, be out of the ordinary if an individual, dressed in all black, is quickly walking through a crowd while he has his hoodie on and hands in his pockets. It’s odd behavior. Same for someone moving nervously carrying a bag that does not appear to be bought at a store or, to add to that, he doesn’t have workman apparel. It’s out of the ordinary.

If I’m at a bank and someone walks in, sits in the corner for an unreasonable amount of time without engaging in any transaction and appears to not work there, I’m alert. Are his eyes moving around scanning for cameras, are his lips moving to suggest he’s counting something, is he in apparel which could perhaps more easily conceal a gun?

Same if I’m out sitting while enjoying coffee and an all-black car pulls in and just sits. Whether the engine is on are not does slightly change the degree of the potential threat of the situation. If it’s on, is it a quick getaway for a potential crime? And is it at night where there are fewer people and witnesses?

These are all pretty basic to practice, in my view. So it doesn’t help when everyone’s head is glued to their smartphones. Especially with women. They appear to be much less aware than men who themselves very much have this issue with their smartphones.

2. The Gray Man At Political Rallies

The concept of the Gray Man is simple: blend in. Do not create stimuli around you. Gray is often considered a very bland color. It’s boring, lifeless, moot. This isn’t to suggest wearing gray makes you undetectable, but the concept works well with this color.

Blend in so well to your environment that you essentially appear bland. But if you’re at a political rally, then you know anyone is a potential threat. Wearing a Trump hat or an American flag raises suspicion, creates stimuli from your political adversary, and now you are made. If you’re European-American, wearing a hat over your shaved head is a good idea in terms of lessening your presence because there is still widespread delusion about the reincarnation of literal Nazis.

People involved with BLM, AntiFa and other leftist gangs are already going to make assumptions about your character and will dehumanize you and engage violently. Perhaps lessening that delusion, if even possible, could potentially add to your safety and security, in some respects.

It’s not that one desires to give up their chosen headwear and so on, but weighing the pros and cons should be obvious if you wish to avoid conflict. Which, again, these days is hard to do.

3. Consider Your Neighbors And Conversation

Depending upon your living situation, if you’re in California, talking openly with your neighbors about politics in relations to conservatism, in a positive light, creates quite a stir of stimuli. And, given the next US elections are coming up, you’ve made an impression in their mind. If they believe you are a literal Nazi, you’ve coined a political adversary. If you’re in the deeper South surrounded by red-necks and American-loving Christians, chances are, from my observations, you’ll be less likely to be attacked for your political (or religious) views.

I personally despise having to sometimes lower my voice or take a quick glance around because I’m about to say something that might cause stimuli to a potential assailant. But, in these contemporary times, it’s up to you to decide what’s worth it and what’s not.

Conclusion

These are merely a few things of quality in regards to your safety and security. I’ve been quite observant. It’s not always intentional, but I’ve seen things and made assumptions (or had a strong thought about it) and turned out to be spot on.

Identity your adversary. Weigh in how much of a threat they are to you. Pay attention to who they know or talk to, then extend that person’s conversation partners and then extend it again. Leftist are ruthless, dangerous, hateful devils. And remember, if you ever see anyone wearing the hammer and sickel, then be even more alert.

Read Next: Being Situationally Aware Is A Matter Of Life Or Death

It is 7:30am on the day after Christmas in 2004. The sun is already up in the blue sky of the Andaman sea, and some rare tourists are walking on the main beach of Phi Phi island in Thailand. Most of the tourists are still sleeping, dealing with the usual hangover that comes with the traditional Christmas party.

The locals are busy preparing the long tail boats they use to cruise around the nearby islands. Some Westerners like me, who live here, fill and carry the diving tanks the scuba divers will use to explore the underwater reefs today.

In less than an hour, this idyllic landscape will turn into a dramatic nightmare and many of those people will die, crushed and drowned by the powerful wave of a tsunami coming from the Indian Ocean.

Was there a way to prevent that? Not more than preventing a hurricane in Florida or an earthquake in California. Scientists can predict it, multi-million dollar sensors can detect it, information networks can announce it through various media, but there is no way to prevent it from happening. But we can be more prepared than when I experienced this tsunami in Thailand. Governments and local administrations can invest in infrastructures to mitigate the potential risks and better inform the general public.

And individuals can be better prepared to deal with the consequences of natural events. The people who tragically died on this island were not different from any other people on this planet. As a matter of fact, a vast majority of them were young and relatively fit. They didn’t survive for only a handful of reasons, mainly:

lack of situational awareness

lack of appropriate mindset

lack of physical skills

The situational awareness and appropriate mindset are mainly due to the fact that, when we are on vacation on a tropical island, the last thing we want to think about is the remote possibility of a tragic event of any kind. If the place is nice and sunny, if the locals are friendly and smiling, we quickly feel safe and let our guard down. No pickpockets, no fire, no mugging, no earthquake, no car crash, and therefore no need to pay attention to any precursor sign, no need to keep our valuables and documents with us at all times, no need to have a look at evacuation routes, fire exits, etc. In other words we quickly become complacent when everything looks like paradise.

But this lack of situational awareness and appropriate mindset was only one side of the coin for the many fatalities that occurred that day in Thailand. One of the main culprits was the lack of physical skills. Many people didn’t survive simply because they didn’t have the physical abilities to deal with what happened to them and around them.

Some were not comfortable in the water and couldn’t swim across the strong current that the wave and the obstacles created. The event only lasted a few minutes but the water raised quickly and submerged the lowest part of the island.

Some were not able to hold their breath for a few seconds. When the wave hit the hotels and guesthouses near the beach, most of the rooms were submerged very rapidly, but not for very long. Surprise and panic killed a lot of people in their rooms.

Some were not able to hold on to fixed objects for more than a few seconds. The current was strong and being able to hold on something, or even better to climb onto something, was a good way to increase the chance of surviving.

Some were not able to run away and climb a hill or a stairway. For those who were on the beach and saw the wave coming, the proper action was to sprint and find high ground. Reaching the highest floor of a hotel or one of the nearby hills was a good way to avoid the full force of the tsunami.

Some were not able to push away heavy objects. Entrapment was one of the major risks in this event. Many people drowned because they lacked the necessary strength to move away the objects that the current pushed onto them.

The Western world tends to rely heavily on tools to make our life easier and tools to make it safer. Instead of dealing with the weather, we use tools to make it more bearable (A/C, heater, umbrella, raincoat, sunscreen, etc). Instead of moving in this environment, we rely on tools (a car or an ATV instead of walking and running, a canoe or a boat instead of swimming). We easily blame the lack of protection that can get us injured (“I cannot walk/run without shoes”, “I cannot float without a flotation device”, “I will fall and break my skull if I don’t wear a helmet”, etc).

Tools are fine and make our life more enjoyable most of the time, but what if? What happens when we don’t have them? That’s where skills and physical abilities make plenty of sense. Every one of us, regardless of age, gender and race should be able to do at least the following things:

sprint for at least 100 yards/meters in order to get out of danger (collapsing building, wild fire)

climb over a wall or fence at least shoulder high (to escape an angry pitbull or a group of thugs)

carry for at least 10 yards/meters someone of 3/4 of your size and bodyweight (to save someone from an immediate danger)

swim at least 100 yards/meters without stopping and float at least 10 minutes with no aid or support (to get out of a dangerous zone and wait for a rescue vessel)

walk 5 miles in an hour (to reach a gas station when you run out of gas and you cannot call for help)

perform some basic self-defense techniques (striking, grappling) to react appropriately in a mugging/rapping/life-threatening situation

hold your breath for at least one minute while walking/moving at a slow pace (to escape the toxic fumes of a building on fire)

crawl for at least 30 yards/meters to seek cover (active shooter situation) or rescue someone (a child hidden under a car, or someone trapped under or inside something)

If you think that any of those abilities is way beyond your limits, it’s maybe time to reconsider your priorities in life. Being self-sufficient and prepared doesn’t mean relying on tools—it’s knowing that you can deal with dramatic circumstances to the best of your abilities. Tools come in handy when you have physical limitations (age, injuries, illness) but they shouldn’t be the first line of defense.

Having some regulations that require a floatation device in every hotel room in Thailand will not save any life if the next tsunami in the region happens in South Korea. Use your body and your brain. They are the original tools, and you have them with you all the time!

Read More:  How To Improve Your Situational Awareness From One Minute Of Effort Per Day

[c-is-for-circinate]

A while ago you mentioned really hating the Persona 4 protagonist as Yu Narukami (from the crossover games and possibly the animation) but liking him as Souji Seta (from the manga, I think?), which is also the name you seem to use most regularly. If you don't mind, could you explain the difference and why you prefer one over the other?

FUCK YES I CAN

(there are Persona people on my dash, that’s so fucking exciting, I have many things to say about these video games and the fandom is small)

Okay so I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the protags from Personas 3, 4, and 5 in general, and about the various versions of them that show up in various media.  It has to do with names and gender and how the very specific conventions of being the silent protag of a JRPG translate into creating character, and I could ramble about this forever, so it’s going behind a cut.

Step one: all Persona Wild Card protagonists are genderqueer and neurodivergent.  Period.

A persona is, theoretically in game lore, a reflection of your soul–specifically, a reflection of the part of you that you choose to show the world, because it’s strong and powerful and keeps all the weak parts of you safe behind it.  In early Persona games, every PC had a couple of different masks they could switch between, and that makes sense, but starting in P3 our party members each get one mask that eventually evolves into another one, and we-the-protag get more than a hundred.

We switch between masks constantly, at the drop of a hat.  We learn to level these personas up, we figure out how to be these other people, by watching and learning to understand our friends.  And there is something intensely queer about the fact that the masks we put on, with no pause or hesitation, can be male, can be female, can be both, can be neither.  Sure, it’s possible to argue that the protag has any certain specific gender identity underneath/behind those masks, but then we’re heading straight towards a complicated discussion about what it means to pass as one gender, vs what it means to model yourself after individuals of one gender while passing or identifying s another, vs what it means to model your actions after a theoretical version of yourself that has a different gender than your own, and like, let us be honest, just having to get that deep into the weeds on that discussion is pretty inherently queer to begin with.

Add to that the essential nature of who Persona protags are as people, based on their reality as video game characters, and we get someone who really does not fit a ‘straight cis neurotypical�� frame.  The entire scheduling system in Persona just speaks to every single part of my brain that understands executive dysfunction.  You do exactly one thing per unit time.  You can wander around town forever, but as soon as you stop to talk to another person, that’s it, that is your One Thing, that is all of the spoons you have for this time period, you can maybe do another thing later.  This really hit home in Persona 5, where your protagonist has a goddamn talking service cat without whom he can’t remember how to start any task up to and including going to bed (and people bitched about Morgana so hard, but also #RELATABLE oh my god), but it’s there in 3 and 4 as well if you look.  The P4 protag does favors for every single person in town.  The P4 protag stands out in the rain fishing for hours.  The P4 protag can accidentally spend an entire afternoon petting cats.  The P4 protag tries to make tomorrow’s lunch and has to think for a while over whether to add soy sauce or sugar.

So: the video games give us these characters who are intended to be hollow so that we can fill them with our own self-projections (and maybe I am self-projecting here, why not, everybody else gets to do it), but that very hollowness is also a shape, do you see what I mean?  You can extrapolate a person based on assuming the dialogue options the protagonists get are actual things that run through their minds, based on what choices are even available for them to make.  You can ask questions about what it means to be so hollow in the first place, what it takes to be the sort of person who can switch masks in the blink of an eye when everybody else around you makes do with all of one.  It’s really interesting to ask those questions.

Step two: the naming of Persona protags is complicated, and is as much a fandom question as it is a canon question.

In general, persona protags starting with P3 have gotten two names: one in the official manga that starts coming out right around the same time as the video game, and one in later animes and tie-in games.  What this means, at least in Western fandom (I don’t know a ton about Japan-only fandom!) is that for the first year or more of having a protag, the only name we have for them is the manga name, and so that’s the name 99% of fandom jumps on in those first several months.

When we explore and extrapolate and do all of that extremely transformative fandom work, looking at the empty spaces around a protag and figuring out who he has to be to fill them (or she, the P3 FEMC is all of this dialed up to a hundred), we at least start doing that work under the manga name.  To me–and, in my experience, to most of fandom, whether they think about it or not–the name has relatively little to do with the manga itself.  It’s the name fandom had to hand when they first played the game and began to figure this person out.  It’s the name for thousands of different interpretations that can fit inside the shell of a person the video game gives us.

I find that transformative labor, and those thousand different interpretations, wildly fascinating.  I enjoy doing it myself.  I like seeing what other people come up with.  Figuring out how to fill the outline of a person who can be anyone (figuring out the difference between Minato Arisato, and Souji Seta, and Akira Kurusu, and learning who they are as individuals by picking out their contrasting spaces) is one of my favorite things about Persona.

The characters from the tie-in animes, then–and from P4 games like Arena and Dancing All Night, which are as much visual novel as video game, where the MC has an extremely distinct personal voice–each present one version of that infinitely-variable character.  They’re a single interpretation.  They’re a specific interpretation, separate from the many open options of the game itself, they just happen to come with a specific name.

Makoto Yuki, from the P3 anime, is a very different person than the character I played when I played P3, and they’re both very different than the person I write when I write Minato Arisato, the human I extrapolate when I look at all of canon and put my analysis goggles on.  Now, I happen to love the P3 movies, and their interpretation of Makoto Yuki, who is a giant ball of severe depression and whom I consider an excellent exploration of the game’s themes of despair and mortality, but I love them like a really, really good fanfic.  They don’t trump the ‘canon’ of the game for me; they’re an outgrowth of it.  Likewise, I don’t know Ren Amamiya particularly well, but he’s a quiet guy with an inner well of sheer rage that really works for me in what I’ve seen of him.  Not my Akira, but a cool dude.

In general, when I’m talking about Persona protags, I use the anime or tie-in game name to refer to the specific version of that character written in that game or anime, and the manga name to refer to that earlier, slightly hollow character of infinite possibilities and fandom interpretations.  Which leads us to Souji and Yu.

Step 3: Yu Narukami is a fucking jackass

I think the big thing for me about Yu Narukami, the specific interpretation of P4 Protagonist as seen in the anime and tie-in games, is that he isn’t genderqueer or neurodivergent.  Yu Narukami is perhaps the straightest character in all of Persona with the possible exception of Junpei Iori.  

I don’t actually hate him in the anime all that much, but thinking about Arena-Yu…he’s a dude.  He’s a fucking bro.  He screws around with Yosuke over the suggestion of dirty magazines and he’s vaguely uncomfortable about Kanji.  It’s been a while since I went through any game LP’s, but I remember the attitude Yu took towards his friends and Labrys, and it was authoritative.  Certain.  Of course Labrys can overcome her past, now that she has us here to be friends.  Yukiko isn’t talking like I expect Yukiko to talk, so of course something is wrong with her.

Yu Narukami, as presented in the Arena games (and I’m pretty sure P4DAN, though it’s been even longer since I’ve seen that) is an In Charge kind of guy who Knows What’s Best for people, and doesn’t particularly need to listen to what they have to say to do it.  He shows no sign of ever having molded himself around someone else; he does not present himself as a man (as a boy) who would or even could switch up who he is at a moment’s notice, because he doesn’t seem to be somebody who ever thinks there’s anything wrong with exactly who he is in the first place.  Yu Narukami never had a shadow because he just thinks he’s Exactly That Cool all the way down.  He pops the collar on his polo shirt not because he doesn’t know any better, but because he is actually that guy and always was.

Needless to say, that is not my Seta Souji, who spends hours petting cats, and rarely speaks up to bring order (let alone authority) to his rambunctious bickering friends in any discussion.  It’s an interpretation, sure–and it’s even an interesting one!–but he is not a guy I particularly like.

So how do those two people, Yu and Souji, even fit together at all?

And this is where we go from me having opinions on various actual versions of characters as-written, and start diving into themes, theories, and mythological parallels.  There is a way to tell the story where it all makes sense, where Souji (and even the Yu of the anime, who’s got more shades of asshole than my typical headcanon but still sits far closer to my personal version of the protag than any of the douchebro versions of Yu in the sequel games) ties into later-Yu and it’s a graceful, interesting, thematic choice.

I don’t think it was intentional on the part of the writers.  But it does work.  And here’s how.

Step 4: I go on a digression about persona protags and sacrifice

I have spent way too much time thinking about themes and parallels between Personas 3, 4, and 5 (someday I’ll watch some decent LPs of 1 and 2, but today is not yet that day, so we’ll stick to the Wild Card trilogy for now).  One of the things that I love is the way each protag interacts with the big major theme thing of their game, losing it and gaining it and sacrificing it only to gain it yet again, and it happens in all three games.

In P3, the thing at the center of the game is life, in contrast to mortality.  You’re in a car crash at age 6, your parents die, you carry Death Himself in the space behind your heart, you spend all game struggling to survive and also trying to figure out why you even care to bother.  At the end you die so your friends can live, but also you’re not, quite, entirely dead–you are asleep, and at the end of all the world you’ll wake up and still be there, just you and Aigis and Elizabeth at the end of all things, alive and mortal.  In P5 it’s freedom, and you start the game in chains, flash forward and flash back, breaking bonds and forging them right up to the point where you turn yourself into the police, only to eventually be found innocent of even the original crime that bound you to begin with.  There are metaphors and angles to the whole thing, the way becoming Satanael is in its own way both a defiance of Yaldabaoth in front of you and a surrender, complying with the will of every furious desperate angry follower-believer-worshipper in the Tokyo streets, but what we care about most right now is how this shows up in Persona 4, where our thing is identity.

The Persona 4 protagonist, whoever he is, shows up in this small town with no identity at all.  He had a life where people knew him, but the people in this small town don’t even have rumor and hearsay about dead parents or criminal charges to go on.  And sure, every protagonist starts out on a train to a new town, but the P4 protagonist goes even farther than that.  You show up in Inaba, and one of the very first things that happens to you, something that doesn’t happen to any Persona protag in any game I’ve ever seen, is that you lose your persona.

The starting persona in P4 is Izanagi.  Based on the fact that Adachi’s persona is Izanagi, too, based on the fact that Izanami is the one who granted you access to the TV world and presumably a working persona to begin with, based on every theme and implication in the game–Izanami gives you your starting persona.  She chooses who you are.  She declares that you’re ‘hope’, and maybe you had some qualities that suited you for that role to begin with, but anyone you’ve ever been is gone now in service to your part in Izanami’s play.

One of the things I really liked in the P4 anime was the protag’s terror of being alone and empty.  Now, I enjoy my Souji Seta as someone who’s a little bit hollow and empty–not in a bad way, but like a clear glass that can be filled with anything, and takes on the color and nature of whatever it holds–but right, in a story whose main theme is identity and accepting yourself, being infinitely transformable is both ideal and terrifying.  If the P4 protag can be anyone, how can he be someone?  In the end, the only identity that’s really his and not copied from one of his social links is the one that Izanami gave him.  His final persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, has more to do with her than anything that comes from inside him.

Loss and gain, sacrifice and victory–the P4 protag goes back to his old life, sacrificing the person he’s created for himself here in Inaba to reclaim the person he theoretically used to be.  Depending on how you read the ending, he gives up his infinite adaptability in order to fill himself with a final persona that is chosen for him, sacrificing his innate capacity to be anyone (which is in its own right a key characteristic of his self) in exchange for becoming someone, specifically a someone who was chosen for him.

(This is more my interpretation than anything I’d consider strictly canon, but–in my head, the P3 protag achieves that final moment of apotheosis, and the god-binding power that comes with it, from the sacrifice of his own life and also the fact that after Death lived in his heart for ten years straight he’s explicitly no longer entirely human to begin with.  The P5 protag achieves it by sacrificing his own individual freedom to the collective belief and prayers of literal hordes of desperate people, which we know is full of power because that’s how cognition works.  The P4 protag, I have always suspected just a little, gets it from the actual Izanagi–because if the actual Izanami is the source of all of this trouble, the actual Izanagi must exist too, and to trap a god you must be a god, in some small way.  Our protag is given the tools of power to seal Izanami away, and in return he must become a tool of that power.)

There are a lot of ways to interpret the themes and echoes and actual events of P4 vs P4 Golden vs P3 and P5, and this isn’t necessarily Objective Truth, but this is very much where my head goes when I think about Souji Seta and Yu Narukami.  Souji is the empty, unflappable chameleon boy who spends his time becoming whoever the people around him need him to be, whether that’s a silent confidant or a valiant hero.  Yu is the bold, self-assured young man who has discovered or decided exactly who he is, and knows deep in his heart that he never has to hide or change for anyone, ever again.

Step 5: Yu is a dick because Izanagi is a dick, and okay, fine, I kind of love it that way

All of Persona 4 is about retelling the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and changing the ending.

This is true for P3 and P5 too, of course.  In P3 you walk into Tartarus with everyone you love already at your back, and you set them free to do their own thing (they make their own moves in battle, you don’t turn back to check on them, you trust them to follow or not follow on your own and every member in your team makes their greatest moments of personal growth without you there), but eventually one of you has to stay behind so the other can leave–so you fix Orpheus’s mistake, you stay in the underworld yourself so Eurydice and everyone else you love in the world can go home and live.  In P5 you tell Satanael’s story backwards and forwards, the rise and the fall and the rise again; you start at the very bottom of your own pit (you start as the God of Control’s very own chosen one and don’t even know it), and eventually you climb so high that you’re the one who gets to cast God down into perdition instead.  Start with one tale, end with another.

The story of Izanagi and Izanami is: once upon a time, through no fault of her own, Izanami was sent to the underworld, and Izanagi loved her so well he ventured down after her.  But she was changed down there, her own darkness grown gross and rotten, and though she tried to hide her ugly parts Izanagi did see them.  And then he didn’t love her any more; he fled, and trapped her there in darkness forever, to protect the whole world from her flaws, and never ever looked at his own.

You spend all of Persona 4 doing exactly the opposite: venturing down into another world to find people trapped there, and facing their ugliness, and embracing them and drawing them up into the light anyway.  Namatame is Izanagi-who-dooms-them, though his intentions are good (Izanami died giving birth to Izanagi’s child in the first place).  Adachi is Izanagi-corrupted, claimed and twisted by the darkness of the underworld and his own power, with no mercy in him.  But the P4 protag gets to play the Izanagi of compassion, who tried to save his wife in the first place–and we get to fix it.  We get to save people.  We get to save everyone.

Until we get to Izanami herself, because Izanami can’t be saved.  This all gets way more complicated in Golden when we add in Marie, but in the end, we’ve still got our protag standing in front of the goddess Izanami, sealing her away with Izanagi’s power for the sake of everyone else in the world, because she’s too dark and corrupted to bring back out into the light after all.

It’s really interesting coming at all of this from a Western perspective, because I…can’t actually tell if, playing through P4, we’re meant to like Izanagi?  Are we meant to be on his side in the end?  Are we meant to feel like we’re on this whole quest serving penance for his ancient mythological fuck-up?  Are we meant to think that Yu Narukami, who’s embraced Izanagi in all his pride and self-righteousness as his own inner self, is the good guy?

Because yes, Izanami was trying to destroy the world.  And yes, we saved it by trapping her, just like Izanagi did in ancient myth.  But the Yu Narukami I see in the sequel games is so very much the guy who thinks he gets to decide who’s good enough to get saved and who isn’t.  Labrys deserves to be saved, and because he’s decided to be her friend now, she will be, just like that, because of course he has that power.

By the time Arena happens, Yu has embraced and accepted Izanagi as his true self, flaws and all.  (Let me not forget to point out the sister-complex kingpin title, for the man whose persona is a god that married his own sister.  Let us literally never discuss Nanako as Izanami, because that gets really uncomfortable so fucking quick.)

And Izanagi is a dick.  Which means that Yu isn’t, can’t be the quiet, gentle person I see when I try to extrapolate a most-probable Souji out of P4 canon alone.  Yu is an asshole because that’s the person he’s chosen to be, the identity he’s claimed to replace the one he sacrificed, and I am on reflection kind of into that.

But also he’s still a dick, and therefore I kind of hate him for it.

[theanimeview]

Controversial Opinion: The Rising of The Shield Hero, I don’t hate it + Why

By Peggy Sue Wood | @peggyseditorial

Top of the controversial titles to like this season in anime, according to most everyone I know's list, is The Rising of the Shield Hero. Why? Well, as you may have heard, it starts off with a false rape allegation against the protagonist and that is enough to have it burned from most watch lists as a potentially good anime or manga in the western (and probably everywhere else) anime watching community. HOWEVER, I think that focusing on this aspect without consideration for the rest of the plot and characters is faulty reasoning. There are lot of animes with messed up sh*t that happens--including murders (One Piece has a ton, and that plays off as a generally happy-go-lucky series), torture (Overlord anyone?), and instances where rape is heavily hinted as an outcome for a character in addition to assault that actually took place (SAO tentacle scene ringing any bells?). Considering that I’ve met at least one woman in my adult life that is like the redheaded princess that made a false claim in the anime and manga (and presumably light novel the series is based on) in real life - a long story for another day - it doesn’t seem impossible. It’s rare, for sure, but not impossible. 

Taking a moment here, in American culture, of which I am speaking as a female, American citizen, false rape allegations are a major issue because women already struggle to be believed when they are indeed victims. So many women do not go forward about assault as it is and media that portrays women in such a poor light only reinforces the horrific mindset of “she probably wanted it” or “she probably just regretted it” or "she's making it up" that seems to be so prevalent in our culture. When false allegations are made, it only hurts real victims more. Media often likes to villainize groups of women as a result, and it makes it harder for real victims to come forward out of fear that they will be penalized for speaking the truth--which also happens way too often for anyone to feel comfortable with in the current state of affairs right now. Looking at this anime, it is hard for some to get behind the portrayal of this in any sort of media since we know how much it hurts real victims, but let’s take a moment to look at the anime/manga’s response to this setup. (*Please note, this is not an argument defending rapists or anything of the like. I am an avid supporter of victims of sexual assault and kindly ask that you don’t misconstrue my words. If you would like to question me further, wish to see me amend something stated here, or want to debate about what I’ve written regarding this subject, please feel free to message me. I am always open to criticism or revisions.)

What happens initially after the rape allegation is that everyone, save for the blacksmith after a short while and the people that later get to know Iwatani Naofumi (the protagonist), believes the victim. That is super rare for our culture, and even after the allegations come to light as being false, not everyone believes that he’s really innocent. Instead, the people continue to see him as a villain/rapist, which is even more surprising given the fact that he should have a lot of support given his prior actions and title. His title alone should have given him status enough to stand against her - I mean, he is (1) one of the four summoned heroes; (2) a hero that protects the masses more than the other three; (3) one that advances the most by investing in/learning about the culture he’s in and not just making assumptions because it reminds him of a book/game/whatever; (4) one that tries his best despite his severe disadvantages that continue throughout the series thus far (I’m only at chapter 50 in the manga); and (5) thinks critically about the state of affairs for the people beyond surface level (like cleaning up the corpse of a slain monster that one of the other heroes killed and left on the ground where it began poisoning the land and people living there). 

SIDE NOTE: Even after being proved innocent, the Spear Hero still says stuff like this (chapter 44): 

By the way, chapter 44 is where the ranged/arrow hero’s bad side really comes out. Just saying...

Naofumi lives through the allegation because he is a hero, so his status is helpful in that regard, but look at him compared to the others. Because of their hero status, the other heroes get away with a lot of ridiculous behavior, including their lack of foresight and not having to listen to the queen of the country they are summoned in (its a matriarchy system by the way, so they’re literally insulting the head of the country they live in and get away with it whenever they disregard her--which is something NO ONE else would be able to do). And yes, the manga makes it clear that the reason he is disregarded so easily is that he is the “shield hero” and not many respect the shield in this particular country, BUT he is still one of the four major heroes that they NEED. Angering him is not in their best interests, yet they still disregard/disown/hate on him because of this allegation (even after it is proved to be false). The situation, the society, is vastly different from our own and that’s something I appreciate from the series. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the rape allegation opening, but I can still appreciate that the author used it as more than just a means to put the hero in a bad starting position. As with most starting plot points, the allegation puts the protagonist into place for his hero's journey adventure while also setting up one of our antagonist for the series’ first arc. In addition to this though, it adds a world-building element to the story. Here, women are still considered relatively weak and damsel-like when it comes to fighting, but they have way more political and social power than men by comparison. The other three heroes don’t really experience this initially because they act like this is all a game and exist/live maintaining their patriarchal perspective hence the way the spear hero--a man who acts like he is all about women (protecting them, showing off to them, etc.)--doesn’t consider how the female characters that want to be with Naofumi feel. This idea could be applied to the others too since all the heroes disregard the queen regularly after the king is removed from power (before they were very amicable toward the king). If you are counting, that means the scene does three things. First, it acts as the starting plot point--setting up the protagonist’s starting point and an antagonist. Second, it shows that this is a matriarchal society in which women have more political and social power than men. Third, it shows/helps the protagonist understand the society is truly different here. The rules are different here. By extension, that means it is not a game--in games, justice always prevails (typically), but that is not the case here. 

The anime is pretty different too in the set up since they reveal more differences right off the bat than letting you know over time (like how the country is a matriarchy) and having Myne, the accusor, put a lot more work into tricking Naofumi than in the manga (in the manga, she never fights for him or tells him much about the world, instead letting him figure it all out after they’ve parted). In the manga, Naofumi is an active character, while Myne is bidding her time for that evening to trick him. Naofumi buys her the gear to protect her without instigation, while she tricks him into buying gear for himself that she uses to win over the spear hero. Moreover, Naofumi has to convince the court to let him live because of his role in the manga, whereas in the anime they say they’re letting him live because of his role, essentially taking away an important essence to Naofumi’s character (the essence that he is capable, more so than the other’s even realize, of adapting to the world around him). Another change that I’m not a particular fan of is the other heroes saying that he should at least do his job of saving the world after all this--one that they wouldn’t do at all without proper payment according to their anime selves. There are a lot more differences too like in the payment scene where Naofumi is given more than the others, or how--- way too many changes for me to get into that are not important right now. The changes all make Naofumi out to be more passive and victim-like, maybe because those adapting the series knew that the start was really controversial and want to make Naofumi as likable as possible before his inevitable, anti-hero-like personality comes into play, and while I don’t like it I can kind of understand it from a storytelling perspective since there is no guarantee that this series will get a second season (and as things stand now, it probably won’t) so lets move on. 

Emphasizing the difference between him and the others, in a way that is more obvious then the other three continuing to think this is a game over the course of the series, is how much knowledge Naofumi gains about the world which brings us to another controversial subject in this anime/mange: slavery. (*Please note, I don’t condone slavery either. I’m just analyzing its role in the manga and anime as critically as I can.) (Check out chapter 16 to see how the three still think it is a game even though they are on the verge of defeat.)

Having distinguished that this is another world with rules different from our own, we find that here (in the summoned world), slavery is real, and Naofumi uses that to his advantage. He doesn’t particularly like the idea, but he’s not in a position to change it or really go against it. The anime doesn’t let us know how against it he is, choosing to stay out of Naofumi’s head for most of the episode, but it’s pretty obvious in the manga, and manga spin-off which features the spear hero as the protagonist, that Naofumi is not a supporter of slavery. Still, he’s not in a position to change the rules of the country. NONE of the heroes are, and Naofumi understands that better than most considering that he is thrown from grace in the summoned queendom early on. With not many options, none at the start really, he buys a slave, but despite his hard words, readers can see that Naofumi isn’t planning to force the slave-girl, Raphie as I will call her from here on, into doing something not up to a skill level that he can’t defend her from, at least at the start. 

Only after the pivotal scene in which Naofumi allows Raphie to make her own choice about continuing to fight does their relationship (him forcing her to fight and keeping her as a slave) change. After she agrees to continue fighting for him he never really orders her to do anything like that again, and the tone of the story and their relationship hints that she’s free to go whenever she likes if she chooses to do so of her own free will.  In the manga, when the spear hero, most loudly but not alone, confronts Naofumi about slavery, the Spear Hero acts high-and-mighty and is silenced temporarily by the response he gets from Raphie before making up his mind that she must be brainwashed. Even after the rape charge is cleared and a bunch of other things happens, none of the heroes can forgive Naofumi from being a slave owner, but that only makes them stand out even more as flawed heroes. (Not just because they don't listen either.)

See, the beauty of this show is that the hero’s path, no matter which one you take, is one uniquely flawed. The Shield Hero has disadvantages and to overcome them he has to get his hands dirty with sins he never would have considered otherwise. The other heroes choose to be lone wolves, playboys, and snobbish--they suffer from hubris, and so while they are not aware of their sins, their path is as stained with blood as Naofumi’s is, if not more. The only difference is that Naofumi is aware of it and trying to use these sins to help others. With Raphie, for example, instead of buying a strong slave that he could have gotten in order to level up faster, he chose one he could help get stronger and healthier because if he had to have a slave, he felt that he might as well chose one he could help. The others, however, justify their sins in ridiculous ways, the most egregious of which, I find, is their sheer lack of concern for the people of the land. They constantly take care of surface level issues without concern for the deeper problems or nuances that come from such situations. Like killing a monster to upgrade their gear and not caring that the corpse literally poisons the land meaning the people can’t grow food or drink the local water without suffering from contamination. Or invading on another person’s hunting territory during the leveling island adventure thing and not caring that it upsets people and prevents them from leveling up in ways that may allow them to protect their homes since heroes can’t be everywhere. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the other heroes ultimately suffer horribly by the end with Naofumi living quite well-off for his efforts--maybe even being able to abolish slavery, though that does not seem to be a priority for him at all right now. And the good end wouldn't be simply because he's the protagonist, it would be because he's worked for it. If you take the spin-off as canon (I don’t know if it is), the spear hero certainly suffers betrayal at the end. That aside, I wouldn’t be surprised with the other three heroes suffering has nothing to do with their dislike of Naofumi, after all, Naofumi doesn’t make it easy to be likable to other characters (an anti-hero to the readers, in my opinion). The reason I wouldn’t be surprised if the other heroes ultimately suffer a bad end is because the other three heroes suffer from hubris while Naofumi does not. If, like me, you're a fan of ancient Greek and Roman heroes, you know that heroes who have hubris tend to fall on their own sword because of it. Already we see that their arrogance is causing the heroes that once were superior in fighting strength begin to suffer greatly for their hubris as the waves have been getting harder and harder and the other heroes are falling more and more behind Naofumi in necessary skills for living, and fighting, in this world.

In the end, it’s hard for me to hate this series when the storytelling elements are so strong. It paints its world as one filled with complicated grey areas, which is true of our own world and circumstances. By doing so, The Rising of the Shield Hero seems to be a transformative element in its genre. Not that other isekai’s aren’t attempting this kind of nuance in their writing, but the depth of this series stands apart in the current season and I don’t hate it. 

[doubleddenden]

Finished Cannon Busters at last. I made a brief first impressions review, but I can give a better of a review now that I've seen it all. I'm still impressed by the visuals, and it's very clear that the creator takes inspiration from all sorts of material.

I will say, I feel like the writing needs a bit of work. A major point of plot starts because a character forgot a vendetta they had and remembers it. Not to mention some of the fights promised in the OP don't happen until the end, and even then it's not really what the OP promised. It's not too big of a deal, but I wanted the fight scene with eyepatchgirk and Philly so bad and never got it. It's very much a Bleach OP 2 scenario, like the fight between Uryu and Toshiro that never happened.

That's not to say the fight scenes were bad, but they needed their own individual moments or episodes to happen rather than just cram everything in last minute. So like eyepatch girl could've had an entire episode dedicated to hunting down Sam to impede their progress to save Kelbi, or 9 could have had that REALLY COOL FIREBREATHING trick that... never happens. Also he's played up like this really important character in the OP, but he's around for like... 2 episodes traveling with the gang, and unexplainably shows up at the end.

The season needed a few more episodes to expand, I feel. Like we really don't know much about 9 (or for that matter why he's red now, other than some severe alcohol poisoning). We really don't know much about Kasey or where she came from other than the fact that she was part of a series of robots. We don't know much about Bessie and her supposed intelligence, enough to register as a friend in Sam's system.

Not to mention the voice acting is a bit hard to understand with mumbling or similar moments. Subtitles even delete whole sentences.

Like it has a few blaring issues. But is it bad? Not by a long shot. You can clearly tell there's excitement put into this project and a genuine love for anime. The Sakuga is some next level shit, and the animation is almost always on point. Unlike a lot of anime, there's such a diversity in its cast members.

There's a muscular woman warrior of color with Vitiligo, which is something you never see in media almost ever, and yet it works. Not just this, but Philly looks so damn scrappy and like a goblin while someone like Odin or Kelbi look entirely different and have different eye shapes. Plus like... I didn't even realize Kasey was a girl until the last 3 episodes. With Sam, it's easy because plump lips, sparkly eyes, etc. I just thought Kasey was a lil dude with a squeaky voice.

It's overall smart character design on everyone in the show and has immediate recognizable silhouettes. It's rare to see it in anime, especially when same face runs rampant (LOOKIN AT YOU, FATE), but it's also rare to see it work from a western perspective that is actually realistic and appealing to the eye. Like it's either oversimplified to beans and random shapes or its unrealistic and honestly gross looking styles with too much emphasis on one thing or another. These characters look realistically different and yet hold true to the anime style and its relative realism. Plus, most characters are darker skin-toned POC with maybe a few side characters or villains having sole exceptions to being white or lighter skinned, which is a welcome change for diversity.

The sound design is rather decent as well, and I'm in love with the OP still. I have never skipped it ONCE. It's so so good.

That being said, maybe there was a tad too much excitement on the creator's part. He definitely wanted to fit things in by certain episodes and time frames, and wanted to bring in so many tropes and one off plots that make the likes of Cowboy Beebop, Trigun, Space Dandy, or even Avatar so unique. He might've jumped the gun a lil bit and over emphasized importance to fit these things in when he needed a bit more focus on plot and characters he already had developing in progress. Like as amusing as the crab bit was, it could've been cut out for more character development.

Again though, I like it. 7.6/10 for me. It's rather inspiring to see, especially from a westerner attempting anime. Like there isn't even an argument here like there usually is for Avatar, this IS anime, right down to the Japanese credits in the op. It definitely makes it feel like my pipe dreams of making something insane and over the top, or even possibly my own anime feel a bit more tangible.

It definitely needs a season 2 and Netflix better give it, or else. I'd say get a firm idea if what you want, organize it a bit neater, and it has potential to be better than the first.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish these adoption papers for Sam and Kasey. These two are too pure and I love them so much.

[japanstopbrawler1992]

READ ME

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACIST CHASERS/GAY-FOR-STRAIGHT-CONSUMPTION/OOC TRANSPHOBIA/ANY RACISM WHATSOEVER UNLESS SHOWN AS BAD BY NARRATIVE AND CONFINED TO AGREED UPON PLOTTING

I set Savers in its airing year, so Masaru was born in '92. Can take place anytime after episode 49. However, there just won't be any explicit sexual content regardless of when the thread takes place. I also don't auto-ship: I'm here to walk a character through things, so ships will all be more slow-burn. Also, while Masaru's just pan, I'm actually asexual, so don't even expect me to present beyond a textbook understanding of sexual attraction

Masaru's kind of a jerk. My other two muses are generally at least kind unless the other person isn't, but Masaru's kind of abrasive and gleefully violent. If we're playing, I'll probably warn you beforehand, but Masaru may snap at your muse if your muse isn't a little kid. If your muse didn't deserve it, he'll probably apologise at some point, but yeah, this muse is even less like me than 02's Ken (Bleach's Ichigo is my muse most like me)

I'm on mobile. Period. I can't cut threads. I usually just tag "long post." Can't cut threads.

Seen JP ver only. Haven't seen any others, and I have no reason to bother--the original's in my native. Why would I bother with "orange juice bomb"?

Masaru is mixed race here. In a planned project that's a sister project to my Bleach project I already got a bit of stuff up for, Masaru's mum is Japanese and Russian, and related to Junpei of Frontier, and Masaru's dad was Japanese and Afghani. Masaru actually does speak Japanese, Russian, and Persian.

Masaru's also trans here. He never got puberty blockers, but he finally got testosterone at 13. So his voice changed at a pretty normal age. But he does need a binder and all that. (He loved that black tank top he wears after the memory wipe because it was just the right cut to cover the binder while showing off his arm muscles!) He does someday want kids, and Japanese law, like most US states or most places, requires sterilisation to recognise gender change. His papers also say a different first name. Of course, this probably came up with Satuma. Satuma and payroll at DATS probably know all about it. But being trans isn't *as* hard in Japan as the Anglophonic world. Especially thanks to Kamikawa Aya advocating on outlets like NHK radio since '95, which Masaru would be three then.

I toss the epilogue. Don't like the losing their digimon, and Masaru ditching his family he feels so responsible for and his dad he just got back?

Actually, in my project, ep 48 never happens. Suguru is dead, DATS remains, and Sayuri gets BanchouLeomon as her digimon partner.

Oh, another rule--poor spelling and grammar is acceptable if you are not a native speaker. It infuriates me to no end that I'm supposed to be an idiot for being fluent in three just because English is not my first, but native speakers get to run around spelling "bins" "ben's" and congratulating themselves for "kohnichuwa" but I get beaten/decried for actually knowing the language... And also, ,ZERO TOLERANCE for "garnish my human default English with exotic Japanese uwu" See "zero tolerance for chasers and racism"

Totally available to play in Japanese or Spanish, but you must be fluent.

Masaru lives in Tobechou, Yokohama. I went to the Chinatown in Yokohama once with my dad, but I lived in Koube. And we didn't leave Hanshin region all that much. My knowledge of much outside there being a Chinatown in the '80s (obviously still there, as it was the setting for the Savers movie) and big landmarks like Minatomirai is minimal. I also haven't been back to Japan period since '94. My relatives there are all deceased since the '90s, and flights alone are 1,000$, which, until recently, was definitely over a month of rent. Two for a studio, one plus a couple hundred for a 1 or 2LDK, depending. Might even have had 1.5 baths. By the time Savers was airing in Japan, I was able to keep up with Japanese news via now-gone Japanese-language broadcasts in California, as well as the Web, which is also how I saw Savers. But my knowledge of Japanese things may run the risk of being almost 30 years out of date. Or it might be completely current because I still read Asahi News, the most left-leaning paper I can find. Unsure if related to Hanshin region channel 6, but channel 6 was the best when I was there.

The Daimon family didn't move when Masaru came out, but he came out pretty young. It's just difficult to get trans care for minors. That being said, most peers don't know he's trans. They do know he's mixed, though. That being said, it's not like it's *only* him fighting racist bullies. It's only partially that. Like I said, I fully acknowledge he's pretty abrasive. So he's not completely blameless for all the fights. He could easily someday be the kind of parent who gets arrested for punching a rival dad. Violence is not a last resort for him. It's the best resort.

I do multi-para and don't use icons. But I'm not asking for an exact word count match. All I ask is give me stuff to go off of in replies and for Heaven's sake, do *not* format like House of Leaves when you play with me. Format button abuse looks like a visual panic attack, and is just too chaotic for me to read.

I may go spotty on replies with you. I'll still chat with you via the messenger thingy, and I don't play with people I've never spoken to, even if I've started the interaction, because I need to filter for my sanity, so I need to know the people I play with aren't gonna pull racism or something on me, but when my replies slow, it's because I work on-call at a shelter for seriously physically ill people, I'm also disabled myself, and I don't have the ability to put enough energy for the high-quality replies I strive to give in at the moment. I'm stalling because I want to give you my best. If I want to drop a thread, which is admittedly rare, I'll let you know. I won't leave you guessing.

Some h/cs just for fun

Masaru loves metal. The metal I know is 70s prog and 80s glam metal and stuff. I don't really like much music past about '94, and exactly two albums after 2000 (neither are metal)

Masaru has always had the same kind of attention span I have now even though I completely didn't when I was younger. He's running commentary if you watch an movie with him, his biggest problem with school is the whole sitting and passively listening to a lecture part, he thinks he doesn't like reading because others always talk about sitting there and reading for hours on end (if he's older, he may have realised it's OK to read for 20-minute bursts, something I eventually realised, too). He only really learns by doing. That being said, depending on age, he may not have had the chance to *realise* that yet.

He wouldn't become a sumo wrestler, but he totally watches it. Honestly, any fighting sport, and he's there.

He's very Japanese as far as religion. Sort of takes part and believes in a lot of them at the same time, but none are a overly influential part of his life. This is a thing.

Crossovers with any season preceding Savers are pretty easy with this blog considering my project. The project will eventually merge with the Bleach project, toi, so I also have a thing for that. Overall, I welcome crossovers with most animated media. Live action, I'll consider if you don't use icons with me (it ends up looking like Who Framed Roger Rabbit in my head) I don't do any real person stuff beyond, say, having Masaru listen to real bands or know of other public figures.

There is also a flexibility in playing Masaru in other countries. He could visit family in Russia or Afghanistan, he can be sent over from DATS to help with digimon appearances in countries allied with Japan (coughcontroloverjapanliketheuscough) or I totally ship him with Touma, so he could be in whatever that country is (obviously a Germanic nation in Western Europe)

He's definitely leftist, but his tactics aren't really common among the left. Typically, it's the fascists that will throw the first punch. Except Masaru will, as well. Unfortunately, this means he can take *away* from, say, antifa efforts to counter demo anti-Korean rioters.

He looks down on most weapon use, but probably none more so than guns and other weapons that remove the user from the target. To him, anyone who hides safely behind a weapon and makes the fight so one-sided is a coward. To this extent, he thinks war should be done away with and the leaders of the countries should duel instead of America just wiping out thousands of Japanese (WWII) or Afghani (during his lifetime) civilians (well, in that war, it was definitely not the Afghani government's fault, as that was a radical rebel sect powered initially by Regean, but it was most certainly civilian deaths en masse)

Masaru cannot meditate at all. He's also very reactive. To that extent, he's never really done well with martial arts. There's a lot less focus on self-discipline in boxing and wrestling than in Aikido or karate or what have you. He'd probably love the intensity of Krav Maga or CQC. I just don't know if Krav Maga has a self-discipline component. CQC almost certainly doesn't--it's American.

More when I think of it.

[theculturedmarxist]

Gas the bikes, race war now. Or, Race and Racism as an Historical Process: A Rope of Sand

Racism is not simply a set of beliefs or behaviors which must be discontinued or inhibited. This is a bourgeois conception of racism, which portrays it as a malformed idea as such. If systemic racism is recognized, it is rendered as a malformation within, but not of, the system, which needs must be preserved to facilitate bourgeois society. Ideas in themselves are impotent things. They must be animated by an individual or individuals in order to gain motive force. It’s this animation, this reification, that materializes the idea and places it into a social-historical context. This idea is no longer an idle abstraction, but becomes through its materialization and subsequent action and interaction with its context that creates the idea as a process.

Just as bureaucracy is a materialization of the idea state, so too is the Catholic Church a materialization of the idea of Christianity. Both are ancient concepts, in infancy simple theories for the organization of individuals and groups of individuals, that have through their development affected and been affected by the continuous process of history. A significant portion of humanity’s historical record is a vast library of business receipts. The persecutions of Diocletian; coronation of Charlemagne; the Inquisition: a litany of Christian events that turned the course of history.

Racism too is such a process. Through study, any process can eventually come to be understood to a greater or lesser degree, and with understanding comes a certain amount of predictive ability. Simple processes are easily predictable. You light a match and can assume with relative certainty that it will either burn until it consumes all of its fuel or will otherwise fizzle out. Historical processes tend to be vast, incomprehensibly complicated interactions of innumerable variables which are able to be understood in their entirety vanishingly rarely.

However, even knowing only some of the variables allows for a certain amount of extrapolation. Meteorological forecasting operates on a similar principle. Complex, global processes are studied with as much accuracy as science can allow, which is then translated into a predictive model. Sometimes it doesn’t rain when the model calls for rain. Tornadoes emerge with little warning. But still, for everyday use it suits our needs.

Every process reaches an inevitable conclusion. That does not necessarily imply a terminal point at which the process ends. Often throughout history the resolution is transformative, mutatis mutandis, or evolutionary. The so-called Fall of Rome not being a single, demonstrative event, but a many-centuries long process which caused new systems of social organization to arise where the old systems failed. Western Europe develops along a separate thread than the Byzantine East, two evolutionary paths with a common ancestor.

Racism the idea is a material fact in our society. Its roots are deep in the people and in the state which oversees them. As a system of processes in itself, racism grinds on towards its own inevitable conclusion. We have some idea what possibilities exist there at such a point, transitional, or terminal.

Through the lenses of the racist ideology, we know that:

People belong to discrete “races” determined by physical appearance.

These races have inherent differences which make them ultimately incompatible.

This incompatibility produces separate populations, which must be kept separate in order to prevent cultural and genetic pollution which produces strife. (I wonder if pollution shares a common root with other polis related cognates).

These physical manifestations of racial difference are indicative of superiority or inferiority regarding various traits within those discrete populations.

Inevitably, contact results in conflict, which ultimately ends in the enslavement and/or annihilation of one group or the other.

Whether or not these things are true, they are what people are made to believe in regards to the Hitlerite ideology of race. These are among the messages transmitted whenever the subject of race arises in the Bourgeois media. It is so entrenched that very few, even among Leftist circles, even questions the assumption that there is a fundamental, material difference between White and Black populations. “Asians,” “Mexicans,” “Blacks,” “Whites,” “Natives,” “Arabs,” “Jews,” and so on, aren’t just treated as separate cultural generalizations, but are conceived as being complete, entirely alien species from each other.

This is a reactionary Strasserite conception of our world. Instead of a material analysis of history, its foundations are the fantasies of a racist. It is a reactionary ideology which seeks to replace class struggle as the mover of history with the imaginary conception of race. It isn’t the fact of material accumulation and maintenance that drives history, but the mass delusion of the existence of some sort of “race” and the absurd prophecy of its eventual “perfection.” It’s nonsense, but the conceptual basis for it is the pacemaker regulating the heart of Bourgeois society.

The ultimate conclusion of this sort of ideology is a final, cataclysmic Race War in which the defectives are eliminated in favor of those destined for perfection (if they’re not perfect already).

This idea is in evidence prominently within the so-called “Alt Right.” It isn’t hard to look through any given gathering of these masterminds to find them positively slavering at the mouths. At last, those kike bastards will get what’s coming to them. We’ll finally put those niggers back in their place. The opening of the season on trannie degenerates will be declared a national holiday. Hail God Emperor Trump! For them, this isn’t some far-off prophecy. It’s a conflict in progress, and they’re a people under siege. Every time a cop guns down a black kid, it’s a celebration. Every Jewish massacre is a victory for the Nation.

Humans, in my opinion, tend generally to incline towards humanity, humaneness, towards avoiding conflict rather than seeking it. This isn’t a rosy estimation, but something we see among most animals in nature. Symbolic, ritualized violence is often a substitute for the death match. Even predators tend to kill out of need rather than blood thirst. Unrestrained violence is rarely productive for anyone involved, and often incurs great cost. For normal, healthy individuals, collaboration is preferred over conflict.

For the embryonic Fascists among the Alt-Right, they’ve discarded humanity in favor of death. This apocalyptic conflict isn’t an eventuality to be undone for avoided, but actively pursued. It isn’t an accident of circumstance, but a goal to achieve.

Even aside from this fanatical element, the idea of a coming Race War is gaining purchase generally. Unopposed by a Communist response, it will inevitably continue to develop, with society drifting toward that conclusion. The whole ideology of race and racism works towards this end. Race produces racial animosity, itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a positive feedback loop, entrenching perceived divisions, antagonizing its captive constituents. It is corrosive to human and humanity alike.

I’ve been told before that I have a strange fixation on race. I suppose that might be true, because I think it is the principle ideology which must be culturally dismantled for Communism to develop. Even in the “best” of conditions, Racism is destructive. As the ongoing Capitalist crises intensify, Race and Racism can only become absolutely ruinous. I feel pretty secure in saying that, if it came down to some sort of racialized global conflict, “White People” would almost certainly win. It would be a holocaust of indescribable proportions too terrific in cruelty, too Cyclopean in scope to bear contemplating.

This doesn’t exist solely within the realm of possibility or conjecture. Arguably it’s already happening now. Like wounds festering the corruption will spread. It is already spreading.

However.

There is an inoculation to this plague. Communists know it. It has been a central element of Communism since the beginning. The principle of Internationalism is essential, essential. More than labor organization, more than minority liberation, more than the vilification of capital, the Bourgeoisie fears Internationalism the most of all. An international, class conscious proletariat is the death stroke to global capital. Even more than the last century or the one previous, technology like the Internet makes the development of a truly connected global proletariat a terrifyingly immediate potentiality to the bourgeoisie.

Race is the root from which racial animosity springs, and class consciousness strikes directly at that root. The actual, elective solidarity of class consciousness dispels the illusionary consanguinity of nation and race. Race is a sterile ideology that bears no lasting fruit. It rots and withers beneath the illumination of scientific Communism like a carcass in the sun. Its putrid memory doesn’t long remain. It fades with time and new life springs from its death. Nectar gathers instead of poison.

Without this development, racism and racialism, and their material manifestation and progress will continue unimpeded. Race war becomes an ever more likely result of our current circumstances. If it isn’t opposed and undermined with strenuous energy, the conclusion can only be anticipated with foreboding.

Class consciousness disrupts the material process of racism. The affirmation of our factual universal humanity, in opposition to the mythology of national and racial particularity, derails it, disperses it. It is the only environment in which Communism can truly develop and grow, one in which the old identities, roles, categories imposed on humanity by the past are disposed of. We have to kill the irrationality necessary for racism to exist so that rational solidarity, and from it Communist emancipation can develop in its place.

[renmaru]

you know. sometimes i love something a lot so i need to scream about the things that piss me off about it. i don’t think this is a particularly negative post but it’s just like sheer frustration and if you dont get some satisfaction from articulating your frustration into tumbler dot coms longposts and destroying the capital of this website because you are not a gemini sun then like fair i guess feel free to disregard this. tonbokiris kiwame is cool go look at that.

now to the lukewarm tea ive been simmering for five years. the one thing i always think about all the time is that tkrb is a popular game despite itself. the piss poor gameplay with only the barest of bare QoL in the five years its been up, the seeming complete lack of direction and the frankly nonexistent worldbuilding is held up purely because of its attention to detail and reverence to the original culture and history of the swords combined with some very good character design and subtle but nuanced character writing that can be openly interpreted. just enough flavour to imply something larger but chickening out on actually making anything y’know. concrete. basically allowing the fans to draw their own conclusions. but even then a game like that would not survive cause there have been countless, hundreds of games with high quality and fervent attention to detail and respect for the source material that just died completely because they have such little to actually offer in terms of engagement. i think the main thing that bugs me about tkrb is that it has one of THE most creative, dedicated and strong fanbases of this genre of game who go out of their way to engage with any and all of the content and the devs seem kind of oblivious to this.

in comparison to modern gacha style games, touken ranbu releases barely any new content and frequently recycles content but somehow it’s still relatively popular with approx. 1mil active players daily but the maddening thing is that tkrb can reach much MUCH further. the fans are there, the curiosity is there, it’s just the game content is not fucking there. it does not put the effort into commissioning seasonal art, pushing new events with actual plotline/story content, creating promotional materials, tie-ins etc. but somehow its still in the top 5 comiket circles for nearly five fuckin years straight. here are your badley compiled receipts: c89(w2015), c90(s2016), c91(w2016), c92(s2017), c93(w2017), c94(s2018), c95(w2018), c96(s2019)

 it can launch itself from laughably low in the appstore ratings, hovering in the middle of the 200′s to TOP 30s in the appstore at the flick of a switch. what is this magic button that fucking quadruples revenue and skyrockets your app into the top 50 grossing apps? 3/4 of your characters getting static CGs that you cannot use at all anywhere in the game but will do a powerpoint transition and appear for 5 seconds at login. oh and like a few free mats i guess. and i kid you not it fuckin worked.

wanna know why that worked? it’s cause otherwise characters, especially fan favourites just don’t get anything at all. it’s like most characters outside of the very popular ones rarely get new art, new recollections, new anything outside of their kiwame upgrade which is more often than not years down the line and only recently, four years in, they decided to add alternate costumes but even then there’s a catch which has me feeling some kind of way.

and yes, i fully understand that tkrb is a multi-media franchise, i get that it’s got its fingers in so many pies like the stageplay, musicals, various manga anthologies, the animes, hell its even got live action but man, would it hurt to give some love in game? i’m not asking them to go full fgo route and commission the industry creme de la creme to make 6 full CE illustrations, lots of promo art and tonnes of new merch every single month. but the fact is for such a big franchise, reusing the same sprite art on nearly every piece of official merch, going so far as to add NEW costume art which is just the heads of the old default sprites edited onto new bodies? it screams cost cutting, it screams lazy, the path of minimum effort. it’s almost like the game itself and the original materials are an absolute afterthought at this point with only the most dedicated hanging on to it. i guarantee that the majority of people still playing tkrb are the committed day1 players and the actual rekijou cause it’s just painfully offputting to new fans, with other fans even going out of their way to specify the game is not integral to enjoying the series which sucks, but it’s true.

its a real damn shame to think that something you are so invested in is not particularly invested in itself. sometimes, just sometimes i wish they dev team for tkrb was more hands-on, more adventurous, more willing to listen to players, invest in the game and genuinely try and make the game the best it can be. i’m not asking for balls to the wall summer events, beautiful animated CMs from the likes of the industries best animators, i’m not asking for pages of supplemental lore compiled into books, character backstory novels or whatever i’m just asking for the lore and the characters that we love to sometimes occasionally be remembered in the actual game outside of like ... the two years between their kiwame and the vague possibility of a recollection. i want to feel like this game puts as much effort into itself as the fans do towards it.

it’s a painful truth but there’s one shining light which is that the fandom for tkrb is genuinely one of the most committed and transformative ones ive ever seen. i have never been involved with a fandom that varies so widely and puts in so much effort for these characters and this world. tkrb exists solely as a popular franchise due to the sheer legwork of the fans carrying it on their backs collaboratively. ultimately, tkrb is very very lore-light, there’s so much thats missing and the characters in-game rarely rarely interact with each other. the characters are contained solely in however many voice lines they get at implementation, their kiwame letters, and their updates kiwame lines and the only interaction they get with other swords is recollections or depending on the sword, the odd custom sparring lines.

but despite that there has been so much fan effort to explore everything in so many different varied ways, and amazingly there are certain tropes, relationships, lore etc. that have started off fanon and become canon. the fan community, especially the fanartists, doujins, writers, animators etc. being given a small indulgence by the anime is one of my favourite things about tkrbs relationship with its fanbase. that’s not to say that the fans dont give back in kind a hundred fold.

there’s so much i love about tkrb fans going out of their way to go SEE historical swords in japan, single-handedly reforging swords using crowdfunding and revitalising lots of small-town tourism having real world impact. shit makes me unbelievably happy. the stage plays and musicals are always met with warm reception and are always well attended and even though its hard to access, there are lots of western fans who have dived into a whole new MEDIUM that most of us arent really familiar with but out of their love for tkrb theyve done that. they have hosted the musical as far out as india and france, making tkrb a truly worldwide franchise and there theyve met full seats! as far out as india! then theres the fantranslators, who always have the drive the commitment and energy for the thankless work, the wiki always always is well maintained and they have new content up so fast, and there are so many people willing to help you out. even when crunchyr*ll got hanamaru s2 (i think) a week late and we were left without subs for the premier episode for a whole ass week, fantranslators who had never subbed before stepped up to translate a whole episode for FREE, encoding, subbing and timing it all despite never having done so just so others could understand the episode faster than cr*nchy themselves could. even, as well, it’s made so many history nerds out of a whole bunch of people, it’s created an appreciation for nihontou and japanese history that would otherwise probably never be in their orbit because of how inaccessible it is, especially in english. even on a personal note, i started learning japanese primarily so i could understand tkrb and the history behind it better and to read jp fanart/interact with fanartists.

 no matter what, i am forever warmed by how much i love tkrb and its fanbase and im glad that tkrb is still going strong, even despite itself sometimes and i hope that moving on tkrb tries new things, and becomes better for everyone.

[emilysn2019-blog]

Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens is a 133-acre home to a range of animals, and is located in Griffith Park, one of our favorite places in all of California. In this LA Zoo review, we’ll share photos, cover the good and bad of the L.A. Zoo, how it compares to the San Diego Zoo, and more!

To be entirely honest, it took us a while to visit the LA Zoo. Even after living in California for several years and being members of the San Diego Zoo, we still hadn’t gone. This was despite living closer to the LA Zoo and visiting Griffith Park more times than I can count.

We just always had this perception of the LA Zoo–and I’m not even sure what it was based upon–that it was inferior and second rate as compared to the San Diego Zoo, so why bother? Well, we had that question answered for us when we finally visited the Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens and discovered that our preconceptions were pretty off-base…

Before we dig into the inevitable San Diego Zoo v. LA Zoo comparison, let’s begin with an overview and review of the Los Angeles Zoo…

Today, the Los Angeles Zoo is home to more than 1,400 mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. These creatures represent more than 270 different species, including 58 that are endangered.

In addition, the LA Zoo’s botanical collection spans several planted gardens that contain over 800 different plant species and roughly 7,000 individual plants.

The City of Los Angeles owns and operates the LA Zoo, its land and facilities, and everything inside. The zoo opened in 1966, replacing the now-defunct Griffith Park Zoo, which is still in existence and home to more urban explorers than animals.

Current photos of the old Griffith Park Zoo circulate with regularity and wow what a difference a few decades makes it terms of zoological standards.

While there’s a stark contrast between today’s Los Angeles Zoo and the Griffith Park Zoo of 50+ years ago, the reality is that some areas of the current LA Zoo still feel like vestiges of the past.

While walking around, you can tell that some aspects of the zoo are a few decades old, but there have been plenty of modernization efforts to keep things looking–and feeling–fresh.

More importantly, the LA Zoo is clearly a modern zoo from the perspective of evolving beliefs about the humane treatment of animals.

The facilities appear, to us at least, to be humane and spacious for the creatures, and we saw nothing that raised any concerns about animal treatment.

Of course, we are hardly experts in this realm, but it’s worth noting that the Los Angeles Zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. I do know that the LA Zoo has done extensive work to aid in the recovery of California Condors.

In 1982,  the zoo launched California Condor Recovery Program (CCRP), which then focused on building a captive breeding population. Now that the species has recovered, the LA Zoo assists with monitoring and maintaining the populations of wild condors that have been re-established in California.

One of the most engrossing exhibits is Campo Gorilla Reserve, which is home to six western lowland gorillas. Here you walk along a forested pathway for views of two separate troops of gorillas, a family and a bachelor group, living among waterfalls and lush plants.

The LA Zoo’s latest attraction is the Rainforest of the Americas. This exhibit features detailed sculptures, educational graphics, and architectural elements create an immersive experience for visitors, while animal highlights include piranhas, giant otters, harpy eagles, and cotton top tamarins.

Elephants of Asia is one of the LA Zoo’s main (and newer) draws. This exhibit is aimed at familiarizing visitors with the challenges Asian elephants face in the wild, including their shrinking natural habitat. This is an interesting and illuminating exhibit.

This Elephants of Asia tracks the history and culture of the animal through Cambodia, China, India, and Thailand. There are bathing pools, sandy hills, varied topography, and several different viewing areas offering varied perspectives into the exhibit.

Another favorite area of ours is Australia, which is home to the Zoo’s kangaroo and koalas. These marsupials are displayed in the Australia section of the L.A. Zoo.

This area is also home to the Australia Nocturnal House, which features a rare Southern hairy-nosed wombat, a species that can only be seen in four other Zoos in North America.

The koalas share two separate habitats with kangaroos, wallabies and echidnas. It’s cool to watch the baby koala and kangaroo joeys in this area.

Although tangential, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share one of my favorite stories about P-22, who is suspected in a “koala heist” at the LA Zoo a few years ago.

This was the area of the zoo where we spent most of our time, completely transfixed by those marsupials. With that said, we spent a lot of time at various areas throughout the zoo, finding a number of lower profile exhibits just as compelling as the big name ones we specifically list here.

Time flew by, and before we knew it, we had been at the LA Zoo for roughly 5 hours.

It’s tough to find much to criticize about the Los Angeles Zoo, especially for its relatively inexpensive admission fee. One thing we did notice was that none of the food looked even remotely worthwhile, but this is hardly unique to the LA Zoo.

We anticipated this, eating before arriving and again immediately after leaving. It’s Los Angeles–even with decent zoo food, you’re obviously going to do better dining at a real world restaurant.

The Los Angeles Zoo receives nearly 1.8 million visitors per year, making it one of the most popular attractions in Southern California. Thankfully, the sprawling complex and 100+ acre grounds make it good at absorbing crowds, but it still can get busy.

To avoid crowds, the best option is visiting right at opening on a weekday morning. Weekends are consistently the busiest time to visit, but weekdays can be bad if you choose poorly and visit on a day that multiple school groups have field trips to the LA Zoo. Visiting in the morning also offers the upside of seeing the most animal activity.

No matter when you visit, one of the big upsides to the Los Angeles Zoo is the lush grounds. Throughout the zoo, the pathways are frequently lined with mature trees that provide ample shade and a cool environment.

Likewise, many of the viewing areas offer shade and reprieves from the heat. This is a big deal on a hot day.

As for how the Los Angeles Zoo compares to the San Diego Zoo, the latter still reigns supreme. However, it’s a much closer call than you might expect, especially with the San Diego Zoo being world renowned and receiving all the accolades.

San Diego Zoo is superior thanks mostly to its “other stuff” like the aerial tramway, bus guided tours, and more. The wildlife lineup likewise gives it an edge, but not a pronounced one.

With that said, base 1-day tickets to San Diego Zoo cost nearly triple the price of those to Los Angeles Zoo. Quite simply, it’s not that much better than the LA Zoo. So, if money is an issue, we’d recommend the Los Angeles Zoo.

If money isn’t an issue, it probably comes down to whether you’re planning on visiting San Diego in addition to Los Angeles. (Arguably, the San Diego Zoo is not worth a special trip. The San Diego Safari Park, on the other hand…)

Overall, we were shocked by just how much we enjoyed our time at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens. It’s one of the best zoos we’ve visited, and while not quite on par with its formidable and far more famous counterpart in San Diego, it’s deserving of praise and tourist’s attention, too.

The Los Angeles Zoo is also conveniently located in Griffith Park, making it easy to spend the morning and midday at the zoo before heading Autry Museum of the American West for the afternoon, and then to Griffith Observatory for sunset and dusk (potentially even Hiking to the Hollywood Sign). That’s one great, jam-packed day in L.A., and all without having to fight any freeway traffic!

If you’re planning a trip, check out our Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles or our California category of posts. For even more things to do, The Best Things to Do in Los Angeles: 1001 Ideas is an exceptional resource, which is written by other locals. If you enjoyed this post, help spread the word by sharing it via social media. Thanks for reading!

Your Thoughts

Have you been to the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens? If so, what did you think of experience? If you’ve been to both the LA Zoo and San Diego Zoo, how do you think they stack up to one another? Any additional tips to add that we didn’t cover? Would you visit the LA Zoo again, or do you think it was a ‘one and done’? Was it worth your time and money? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!.fca_eoi_form{ margin: auto; } .fca_eoi_form p { width: auto; } input{ max-width: 9999px; } .fca_eoi_form_input_element::-webkit-input-placeholder {opacity:0.6;color:;} .fca_eoi_form_input_element::-moz-placeholder {opacity:0.6;color:;} .fca_eoi_form_input_element:-ms-input-placeholder {opacity:0.6;color:;} .fca_eoi_form_input_element:-moz-placeholder {opacity:0.6;color:;} .fca_eoi_layout_3.fca_eoi_layout_postbox div.fca_eoi_layout_submit_button_wrapper:hover, .fca_eoi_layout_3.fca_eoi_layout_postbox div.fca_eoi_layout_submit_button_wrapper input:hover {background-color: !important;} .fca_eoi_layout_3.fca_eoi_layout_postbox {max-width:100%;} .fca_eoi_layout_3.fca_eoi_layout_postbox div.fca_eoi_layout_name_field_wrapper {max-width:49%;} .fca_eoi_layout_3.fca_eoi_layout_postbox div.fca_eoi_layout_email_field_wrapper {max-width:49%;} 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101 Things to Do in Southern California

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[cookinguptales]

Omg with TokyoPop 😂 Please share the early 2000's anime days this is new to me and sounds hilarious.

they were dark-ass times, my friend

TERRIBLE AMERICAN PUBLISHING (idk how it was in other countries; I went to Paris many years later and was impressed with their...everything when it came to different kinds of comics but) Tokyopop which was basically run by people who only half knew what they were doing, Viz which mirrored manga for a long time bc they assumed Americans were too stupid to learn how to read the other way (which was particularly annoying in comics where like a right arm or something was important), ADV which probably couldn’t actually release an entire series if their goddamn lives depended on it (yes, I’m still mad about MaLoki), and various other publishers that would publish like one title ever

No legal streaming!! Which meant you either had to buy super expensive DVDs or pirate them online. (BACK IN THESE DAYS, CRUNCHYROLL WAS A PIRATING WEBSITE. NEVER FORGET.) This was right at the end of VHS days, though, so it could be worse!! If you got a VHS, it would be subbed or dubbed. When I watched Evangelion it was on bargain bin VHS tapes so it was like 70% subbed and 30% dubbed and it was a painful time.

Fansubs online were a huge thing. Legit companies had pretty slow turn around (you were lucky if something like the Anime...Network? I can’t remember. or Toonami or Funimation picked it up, bc they had tv channels -- though you’d usually have to put up with a shitty-ass dub) and you’d usually have to wait for a large-chunk release. If you wanted to watch something as it aired, you had to watch it raw or depend on fansubs. These were uh. Of varying quality. They’d usually have a 2-24 hour turnaround depending on the size of the group, with Shounen Jump titles having the fastest turnaround. Those were anime that were already published in manga form in the US via Viz, so they were already mostly familiar with how they’d go, plus...lbr, a lot of those shows were....easier to translate. If you catch my drift. (They tended to be dumb and repetitive. That is what I’m saying.) Also a larger fandom, so greater pool to get workers from and a greater reward re: downloaders. (And people usually torrented new fansub releases bc there were fewer online streaming sites, so popular shows downloaded faster.)

So like, picture if you will, a group of tween-teen nerds sitting around a computer watching fansubs of suspicious quality and shrieking the theme songs in unison because a fansub wasn’t a fansub without bouncing karaoke at the top. We got a DVD player that could play avis at one point and that was kind of mind blowing. Otherwise, you could use an AV cable or buy a DVD.

You bought things legit if you wanted to really support the industry or you really loved a show, not because they were always better quality. I’ll leave it at that.

There were also a lot of scanlation communities, which were basically fansubs but for manga. These were also of extremely variant quality, and there were a lot of rules for a very weird online translation subculture. I always kind of got the impression that most of them hated each other. A lot of these groups required IRC use, which was confusing af, and I honestly believe that’s the biggest reason why most of these ended up getting put on online manga reader sites. There were fewer of those back then.

Most anime fandom was very strongly demarcated. Most of the fandom I engaged with was on livejournal, which meant it was like...maybe 95% female. You’d get more men on forums, which is why we all fled the forums and went to LJ. lol. Trash spaces. Trash.

The whole yaoi/shounen-ai/BL situation was very different. LGBT stuff was considered more niche and still something you needed to “warn” for in most environments. For a long time, the only legit published stuff was like. FAKE and Gravitation and CLAMP and maybe Eerie Queerie or Loveless or something. So basically, it was shit. lol. (As a young teen, I was particularly attached to CLAMP/Kaori Yuki stuff. Thank god my parents never caught on.) Anyway, to get to scanlated BL works, you usually had to go to special communities/sharing circles online or figure out the prominent scanlators and follow them. Very, very little doujinshi was scanlated. Very few (English-speaking) people ventured onto pixiv. There were a lot of arguments about the differences between yaoi, shounen-ai, and BL. Don’t let anyone nowadays fool you. When I was a teen, 90% of all “yaoi fangirls” were queer, and half of that annoying sex-focused excitement was because it was the first gay sex we’d seen in any publication anywhere. It was a different time in the media landscape. BL has a lot of shitty-ass tropes, but we were basically starving in a desert. We took our Gravitation and we liked it. F/F manga was very rarely translated, and I guess that’s still the case today. There’s less of it, and I think we’ve all been trained to prioritize male sexuality. (Plus most of the shoujo-ai that got posted online was like uber-innocent schoolgirl stuff.) People make fun of “yaoi fangirls” and “fujoshi” and all that now, but I can honestly say I would have never understood my own sexuality without that subculture. Like the anime clubs were full of obnoxious little weebs, but let’s be straight about something, no pun intended. They were full of obnoxious little gay weebs. People are all about gay (western) cartoons nowadays, but when I was a teen, they were all about that anime.

Because almost all published anime/manga was in hard copy, you’d get mini congregations of fans in stores. See: hordes of manga fans sitting in the manga aisle of the book store, fans chatting with each other in...suncoast, or wherever they could find DVDs/VHS. The level of social skills in these areas was...not high. Also, a lot of fuckin creepy predatory dudes going after girls. Hooooly shit. I was so glad when they started releasing anime/manga online. Y’all livestreamers on Crunchyroll don’t know how good you have it. You used to have to deal with the fedora bros who were a good 10-20 years older than you but still following you around in stores, conventions, etc. any time you wanted to get new stuff. Like it was a legit problem.

LIKE I’M TRYING TO CONVEY HERE THAT JUST GETTING ANIME/MANGA WAS A PAIN IN THE REAR END. not as bad as the dark days when people had to physically mail each other shit, but it was still definitely a subculture and you’d definitely be thrown in with a lot of people you wouldn’t want to be around. (Similar to how things are in modern western comics fandom...)

Fandom itself was basically a tire fire. In every possible way. Like I’m nostalgic for it in some ways, because in some ways I really miss how text-based it was. There was a lot more meta and conversation, and fanfic was much better supported. Comment culture was a lot stronger and you’d become friends with people who read your work and/or people who wrote stuff you liked. But on the other side of that, there was a lot of weird fanfic gatekeeping. Sporking communities and flaming and fic rating communities were much more of a problem back then. You release stuff to crickets nowadays, which is demoralizing, but back then there was a solid chance you’d wake up to an inbox full of hate mail, especially if you wrote slash. It definitely happened to me a few times as a kid. I think they really targeted teens, too. So writing fic could be shitty. There was less fanart in American spaces, too.

I do agree that to some degree things have gone too far with the whole virtue-signaling/issuefic thing, with a lot of people yelling very loudly about things they may not always understand very well, but you gotta understand. Fandom was a hateful place in many ways back then. Sexist, racist, homophobic, you name it. Female characters are still ignored now, but they’re typically treated less horribly than they were back then. People try to be more educated about other ethnicities and sexualities and such now. You’re less likely to get bullied because you were gay. I think the big problem is that sometimes people hijack important movements to be giant dicks, and a lot of people, especially younger people, get swept up in that.

There was a very specific kind of anime badfic back then. I could write literally an entire post on that. Like god. Where do I even begin??? The bluenettes? The super kawaii fangirl nihongo? Script fic? “Tell me what to write next!” fic? lolololcrack fic? I mean, there were a lot of varieties of suck back then.

Weird subcultures. Like...really weird ones. Things got kind of cult-y relatively often. Just say no to cults.

if you want more details on anything, I’m having particularly painful flashbacks right now. ugh, the free hugs signs.

[skarmorydraws]

@tyrantisterror ATOM Create-A-Kaiju Contest Entry #4: Gnashphalt

Aliases: The Tarbaby, The California Creeper, The Unstoppable Ooze

Date Discovered: September 12, 1958

Place of Origin: The La Brea Tar Pits

Notable Stomping Grounds: Western U.S. Seaboard

Height: 80 feet

Biology:

Few living things on Earth are quite as enigmatic as Gnashphalt. It is not precisely known how he was formed from the La Brea Tar Pits, for although there are Yameneon deposits in proximity to the area, no major nuclear testing has occurred near enough to Los Angeles to have affected them. It is possible that continuous geologic activity over the ages led to a buildup of Yamaneon radiation, which was in turn gradually released via disruptive mining activity when the pits were harvested for asphalt. More confusing still is how Gnashphalt even exists; while the bitumen forming most of his body IS comprised of the remains of microscopic algae and other long-expired living things, it is difficult to imagine Yamaneon radiation reanimating these materials without cells to work from. His relatively recent appearance in the geologic time scale suggests that the Yamaneon caused cells from animals that had been trapped in the tar during the Ice Age and preserved in its depths to mutate and begin regenerating haphazardly upon imbibing the radiation, taking in the tar around them to form one giant protoplasmic matrix which often struggles to form some sort of animal-like shape.

About the only identifiable features Gnashphalt can form are eyes, a mouth, and rudimentary limbs, their arrangement giving him an appearance coincidentally akin to frogs and toads. However, these features are often all he really needs - his entire matrix and the cells within work as one giant fusion of circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and nervous systems, giving him rudimentary control of his form and allowing him to move, breathe, sense his environment, and digest everything degradable he oozes over, at the same time assimilating harder things into his hulking form for personal use.

Gnashphalt is slow-moving, hauling himself along with his stubby "legs" and sometimes rolling from place to place. His name comes from his large mouth, which armed with fangs made of bones, broken PVC pipes, metal bars, splintered wooden planks, and other inedible bits of debris. This mouth can lunge forward with deceptive speed and power, inflicting a nasty, septic bite that can snap smaller mutations in two. His viscous, tarry body can also form crude, short-lived "tentacles" to attack and grab things, and mires anything that makes physical contact with it, holding fast the fists and fangs of enemy monsters and dragging in anything small enough to eat for perfunctory digestion. Aside from this, he can also secrete a foul-smelling and highly corrosive vapor, capable of melting through any material - including stone, concrete, or even metal - that hasn't been specially treated to resist oxidization; he uses this vapor to both disable and predigest bigger and/or livelier prey, allowing him to catch up to and swallow it easily.

Gnashphalt therefore adds a number of deadly powers to the standard kaiju power set:

Super strength An enhanced healing factor Immunity to radiation Sticky Touch Acid Fumes

Personality:

Gnashphalt has been compared by frantic media outlets to Pathogen, another monster dictated by hunger and wanton destructive urges. But while Pathogen exists only to consume, Gnashphalt is a more subdued type of hunger. He eats to live, rather than living to eat, but eating is basically the only thing he cares about. No other living thing matters to him except himself, and it is perhaps thankful that he eats merely to derive sustenance rather than for the sake of eating. While capable of devouring most organic matter, he prefers things that have a similar chemical consistency to tar or petroleum, and therefore gravitates towards large cities and oil refineries where these substances are plentiful. If no such substances are around, however, he'll try just about anything once, even scarfing down the contents of landfills and radioactive waste deposits at a whim.

For a time, it was assumed that Gnashphalt was much like Pathogen in that he had no emotions to speak of, just mindless hunger. His rare interactions with other kaiju have proven this notion wrong to some extent, however - he isn't mindless, just incredibly selfish and ignorant. Other monsters dislike his tendency to figuratively strong-arm his way around, carelessly oozing over other life forms and toppling or melting obstacles to reach what he wants; his answer to any problem is to either eat it or dissolve it, with no third options to speak of. That being said, he also seems to be quite aware of his durability, and engages with other monsters with a rather nonchalant air - followed by excited drooling if his opponents realize that they're not going to win. Indeed, it seems that he can sense the Yamaneon-induced mutation in other kaiju, which (in the absence of oil) appear to be just the thing to tickle his fancy, his tastebuds, and sometimes his insides - he has a habit of swallowing smaller mutations whole, enjoying the sensation of their agonized writhing inside him as they're slowly digested for hours at a time.

Despite his gluttonous nature and sheer durability, Gnashphalt has a few weaknesses which are relatively easy to exploit. Being made of an oil-based substance, he is deathly afraid of fire, and avoids heat sources such as volcanoes; a literal firewall can therefore keep him at bay although the risk of causing other fires is certainly an issue. More importantly, however, Gnashphalt is driven by his appetite rather than any form of common sense, and can be easily led away from a valuable area simply by transporting oil or tar; when dealing with other kaiju, chasing after potential food sources could also get him into fights he can't win, as some other monsters have learned to their advantage.

Gnashphalt's greatest weakness, however, is actually himself - indeed, he seems to be dimly aware that he actually requires fuel and waste to not only grow, but also to keep his own overcrowded digestive enzymes from dissolving him from within. In theory, if kept pacified in the short term, he could be managed only until all the fuel and waste in the world runs out, leaving him to "eat" himself to death later while man picks up the pieces and looks for more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways to power his global infrastructure. His time on Earth is thus limited, but when he passes, he will likely leave a cleaner and hopefully wiser world behind him.

And here’s my last entry to this awesome contest - I hope I’m not too late! I feel like it’s kind of a rush job, but I still like the concept enough to submit it anyway.

One of the archetypes that I feel has been missing from the ATOM universe is a trash monster like Hedorah or Raremon, and I decided to work with that along with addressing the lack of a slime monster archetype. (I see the Writhing Flesh, while a solid concept on its own, as not a true blob monster, more like a giant sentient tumor.) Fun fact: The “Date Discovered” references when The Blob was first released in theaters. ;)

I wanted a blob with a giant mouth pretty much right out of the gate, but after I added some crude limbs to its sides I noticed how much it looked like a frog with weird eye placement, and honestly I think it’s appropriate, seeing as some frogs are literally mouths on legs. I also wanted an “antagonist” monster this time around, though he isn’t a mindless force of pure evil so much as a stubborn, selfish, socially inept slob who just wants to pig out on trash and make other monsters’ lives miserable. I also tried to balance him out by having him not in fact spread filth like other trash monsters do but clean it up instead, even if he causes way too much collateral damage in the process; it also means he can’t stick around indefinitely because non-renewable energy and pollutants probably won’t, either. That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, though - just ask the small monsters he’s probably eaten. :P I wanted to color him poop-brown at one point but I decided that look wouldn’t be in good taste, and I hadn’t had a green-colored monster submitted yet, so I went with a dark sewage sludge green instead - also a subtle hint that tar used to be plant matter. ;)

Alright, with that I’m pretty much done with my entries, ‘cuz I probably won’t have the time to draw and send in another methinks. Good luck to all the entrants, and I’m sure that each and every one of them is awesome in their own right! :D

[panicatthesin]

Please read all of it.

Mmmmmm dont you love being taiwanese but so many people are like, oh are you chinese?? Japanese??? Wait isnt taiwan a part of china?? Whatever yall look the same?? Ever had someone ask if you put soy fucking sauce in your rice bc youre eastern asian, “i thought thats what asian people do!!!” Okay but bitch what part of fucking asia are you talking about???? Oh wow i love asian girl.. OK BITCH BUT NO BC THAT IS SO PROBLEMATIC ON SO MANY LEVELS LIKE HONESTLY smh so many pissin me off with their narrow minded views, and like i try to educate them on eastern asian culture and then theyre like “but itsnt it like this??” Like were you even fucking listening?? “Omg if youre asian you totally watch anime!!! What do you think of naruto??” Like the fuck?? Dont assume all asian people watch anime, and like what part of fucking asia are you reffering to??? And also ive had so many people ask me if ive eaten cats abd i cant describe how fucking pissed this makes me and how much i was the smack the fucking disrespect out of ur face, and like when i see other people disrespect their parents (its normally white people if im being real) like? Do you have no respect for the people who gave birth to you, and sacraficed so much of their like to put you in priority??? Also i get so mad when i see so many fucking white washed movies, like why is it that fucking hollywood makes eastern asian people either the fucking villian or the old man who teaches the white person gongfu like??? Wow ok thanks, why cant we have a japanese person play a role thats ment for a japanese person??? Like in memoirs of a geisha its a korean/chinese person that plays the main girl, and like white people are like wow!!! This is so progressive!!! But its really not bc it teaches people that it’s ok to assume that japanese/chinese/korean/taiwanese/etc all look the same, but WE FUCKING DONT and the whole thing with wow let me wear this kimono!!! Im so hipp and cultured!! #cochella!! Omg florals!!! This makes me so mad bc my grandparents lived when taiwan was under japanese rule, and kimonos are used for cerimonial purposes, and like??? This is defacing japaness fucking culture and im so heated about peoples ignorace and lack of ability to apolojize and educate themselves about it if some bitch thinks its okay to just say every eastern asian person is chinese you smack that bitch and educate them on how fucking hard it is!!! And how there is no asian representation in most media, and you tell them its not okay to mash so many cultures together and to call it fucking “asian culture” and honestly, im glad that there is a blacklivesmatter movement, and there is so much of poc rep in tumblr community, but out of it, there is rarely any of western/eastern asian cultures, plus the differences between them, and BASICALLY I NEED MORE REPRESENTATION OF DIFFERENT POC CULTURES bc it honestly sucks growing up and the only movie i related to was mulan, and she was chinese, and i was taiwanese. I grew up wanting blue eyes, and curly hair. I grew up in a white childhood. I lost my representaion, so even today i can barely even speak to my relatives, and it makes me so sad. I grew up with kids my age asking me what ching chong means in chinese. I had people ask my why i dont wear a kimono to school. Ive had people ask me if i bind my feet. Ive had people ask me if i eat cats for breakfast. I had people ask me if i draw with a yellow highlighter on my skin, whether or not it will show up. Ive had someone yell at me to go back to china to work in a sweatshop. I had someone randomly ask me if i could teach them karate. I had someone tell me that chinese and taiwanese are the same thing. And some people are so naive that i want to cry.

[williamsefton]

Designing For Accessibility And Inclusion

Designing For Accessibility And Inclusion

Steven Lambert

2018-04-09T14:45:39+02:002018-04-09T13:09:28+00:00

“Accessibility is solved at the design stage.” This is a phrase that Daniel Na and his team heard over and over again while attending a conference. To design for accessibility means to be inclusive to the needs of your users. This includes your target users, users outside of your target demographic, users with disabilities, and even users from different cultures and countries. Understanding those needs is the key to crafting better and more accessible experiences for them.

One of the most common problems when designing for accessibility is knowing what needs you should design for. It’s not that we intentionally design to exclude users, it’s just that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” So, when it comes to accessibility, there’s a lot to know.

How do we go about understanding the myriad of users and their needs? How can we ensure that their needs are met in our design? To answer these questions, I have found that it is helpful to apply a critical analysis technique of viewing a design through different lenses.

“Good [accessible] design happens when you view your [design] from many different perspectives, or lenses.” — The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

A lens is “a narrowed filter through which a topic can be considered or examined.” Often used to examine works of art, literature, or film, lenses ask us to leave behind our worldview and instead view the world through a different context.

For example, viewing art through a lens of history asks us to understand the “social, political, economic, cultural, and/or intellectual climate of the time.” This allows us to better understand what world influences affected the artist and how that shaped the artwork and its message.

Nope, we can't do any magic tricks, but we have articles, books and webinars featuring techniques we all can use to improve our work. Smashing Members get a seasoned selection of magic front-end tricks — e.g. live designing sessions and perf audits, too. Just sayin'! ;-)

Explore Smashing Wizardry →

Accessibility lenses are a filter that we can use to understand how different aspects of the design affect the needs of the users. Each lens presents a set of questions to ask yourself throughout the design process. By using these lenses, you will become more inclusive to the needs of your users, allowing you to design a more accessible user experience for all.

The Lenses of Accessibility are:

Lens of Animation and Effects

Lens of Audio and Video

Lens of Color

Lens of Controls

Lens of Font

Lens of Images and Icons

Lens of Keyboard

Lens of Layout

Lens of Material Honesty

Lens of Readability

Lens of Structure

Lens of Time

You should know that not every lens will apply to every design. While some can apply to every design, others are more situational. What works best in one design may not work for another.

The questions provided by each lens are merely a tool to help you understand what problems may arise. As always, you should test your design with users to ensure it’s usable and accessible to them.

Lens Of Animation And Effects

Effective animations can help bring a page and brand to life, guide the users focus, and help orient a user. But animations are a double-edged sword. Not only can misusing animations cause confusion or be distracting, but they can also be potentially deadly for some users.

Fast flashing effects (defined as flashing more than three times a second) or high-intensity effects and patterns can cause seizures, known as ‘photosensitive epilepsy.’ Photosensitivity can also cause headaches, nausea, and dizziness. Users with photosensitive epilepsy have to be very careful when using the web as they never know when something might cause a seizure.

Other effects, such as parallax or motion effects, can cause some users to feel dizzy or experience vertigo due to vestibular sensitivity. The vestibular system controls a person’s balance and sense of motion. When this system doesn’t function as it should, it causes dizziness and nausea.

“Imagine a world where your internal gyroscope is not working properly. Very similar to being intoxicated, things seem to move of their own accord, your feet never quite seem to be stable underneath you, and your senses are moving faster or slower than your body.” — A Primer To Vestibular Disorders

Constant animations or motion can also be distracting to users, especially to users who have difficulty concentrating. GIFs are notably problematic as our eyes are drawn towards movement, making it easy to be distracted by anything that updates or moves constantly.

This isn’t to say that animation is bad and you shouldn’t use it. Instead you should understand why you’re using the animation and how to design safer animations. Generally speaking, you should try to design animations that cover small distances, match direction and speed of other moving objects (including scroll), and are relatively small to the screen size.

You should also provide controls or options to cater the experience for the user. For example, Slack lets you hide animated images or emojis as both a global setting and on a per image basis.

To use the Lens of Animation and Effects, ask yourself these questions:

Are there any effects that could cause a seizure?

Are there any animations or effects that could cause dizziness or vertigo through use of motion?

Are there any animations that could be distracting by constantly moving, blinking, or auto-updating?

Is it possible to provide controls or options to stop, pause, hide, or change the frequency of any animations or effects?

Lens Of Audio And Video

Autoplaying videos and audio can be pretty annoying. Not only do they break a users concentration, but they also force the user to hunt down the offending media and mute or stop it. As a general rule, don’t autoplay media.

“Use autoplay sparingly. Autoplay can be a powerful engagement tool, but it can also annoy users if undesired sound is played or they perceive unnecessary resource usage (e.g. data, battery) as the result of unwanted video playback.” — Google Autoplay guidelines

You’re now probably asking, “But what if I autoplay the video in the background but keep it muted?” While using videos as backgrounds may be a growing trend in today’s web design, background videos suffer from the same problems as GIFs and constant moving animations: they can be distracting. As such, you should provide controls or options to pause or disable the video.

Along with controls, videos should have transcripts and/or subtitles so users can consume the content in a way that works best for them. Users who are visually impaired or who would rather read instead of watch the video need a transcript, while users who aren’t able to or don’t want to listen to the video need subtitles.

To use the Lens of Audio and Video, ask yourself these questions:

Are there any audio or video that could be annoying by autoplaying?

Is it possible to provide controls to stop, pause, or hide any audio or videos that autoplay?

Do videos have transcripts and/or subtitles?

Lens Of Color

Color plays an important part in a design. Colors evoke emotions, feelings, and ideas. Colors can also help strengthen a brand’s message and perception. Yet the power of colors is lost when a user can’t see them or perceives them differently.

Color blindness affects roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women. Deuteranopia (red-green color blindness) is the most common form of color blindness, affecting about 6% of men. Users with red-green color blindness typically perceive reds, greens, and oranges as yellowish.

Deuteranopia (green color blindness) is common and causes reds to appear brown/yellow and greens to appear beige. Protanopia (red color blindness) is rare and causes reds to appear dark/black and orange/greens to appear yellow. Tritanopia (blue-yellow colorblindness) is very rare and cases blues to appear more green/teal and yellows to appear violet/grey. (Source) (Large preview)

Color meaning is also problematic for international users. Colors mean different things in different countries and cultures. In Western cultures, red is typically used to represent negative trends and green positive trends, but the opposite is true in Eastern and Asian cultures.

Because colors and their meanings can be lost either through cultural differences or color blindness, you should always add a non-color identifier. Identifiers such as icons or text descriptions can help bridge cultural differences while patterns work well to distinguish between colors.

Trello’s color blind friendly labels use different patterns to distinguish between the colors. (Large preview)

Oversaturated colors, high contrasting colors, and even just the color yellow can be uncomfortable and unsettling for some users, prominently those on the autism spectrum. It’s best to avoid high concentrations of these types of colors to help users remain comfortable.

Poor contrast between foreground and background colors make it harder to see for users with low vision, using a low-end monitor, or who are just in direct sunlight. All text, icons, and any focus indicators used for users using a keyboard should meet a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 to the background color.

You should also ensure your design and colors work well in different settings of Windows High Contrast mode. A common pitfall is that text becomes invisible on certain high contrast mode backgrounds.

To use the Lens of Color, ask yourself these questions:

If the color was removed from the design, what meaning would be lost?

How could I provide meaning without using color?

Are any colors oversaturated or have high contrast that could cause users to become overstimulated or uncomfortable?

Does the foreground and background color of all text, icons, and focus indicators meet contrast ratio guidelines of 4.5:1?

Lens Of Controls

Controls, also called ‘interactive content,’ are any UI elements that the user can interact with, be they buttons, links, inputs, or any HTML element with an event listener. Controls that are too small or too close together can cause lots of problems for users.

Small controls are hard to click on for users who are unable to be accurate with a pointer, such as those with tremors, or those who suffer from reduced dexterity due to age. The default size of checkboxes and radio buttons, for example, can pose problems for older users. Even when a label is provided that could be clicked on instead, not all users know they can do so.

Controls that are too close together can cause problems for touch screen users. Fingers are big and difficult to be precise with. Accidentally touching the wrong control can cause frustration, especially if that control navigates you away or makes you lose your context.

When touching a single line tweet, it’s very easy to accidentally click the person’s name or handle instead of opening the tweet because there’s not enough space between them. (Source) (Large preview)

Controls that are nested inside another control can also contribute to touch errors. Not only is it not allowed in the HTML spec, it also makes it easy to accidentally select the parent control instead of the one you wanted.

To give users enough room to accurately select a control, the recommended minimum size for a control is 34 by 34 device independent pixels, but Google recommends at least 48 by 48 pixels, while the WCAG spec recommends at least 44 by 44 pixels. This size also includes any padding the control has. So a control could visually be 24 by 24 pixels but with an additional 10 pixels of padding on all sides would bring it up to 44 by 44 pixels.

It’s also recommended that controls be placed far enough apart to reduce touch errors. Microsoft recommends at least 8 pixels of spacing while Google recommends controls be spaced at least 32 pixels apart.

Controls should also have a visible text label. Not only do screen readers require the text label to know what the control does, but it’s been shown that text labels help all users better understand a controls purpose. This is especially important for form inputs and icons.

To use the Lens of Controls, ask yourself these questions:

Are any controls not large enough for someone to touch?

Are any controls too close together that would make it easy to touch the wrong one?

Are there any controls inside another control or clickable region?

Do all controls have a visible text label?

Lens Of Font

In the early days of the web, we designed web pages with a font size between 9 and 14 pixels. This worked out just fine back then as monitors had a relatively known screen size. We designed thinking that the browser window was a constant, something that couldn’t be changed.

Technology today is very different than it was 20 years ago. Today, browsers can be used on any device of any size, from a small watch to a huge 4K screen. We can no longer use fixed font sizes to design our sites. Font sizes must be as responsive as the design itself.

Not only should the font sizes be responsive, but the design should be flexible enough to allow users to customize the font size, line height, or letter spacing to a comfortable reading level. Many users make use of custom CSS that helps them have a better reading experience.

The font itself should be easy to read. You may be wondering if one font is more readable than another. The truth of the matter is that the font doesn’t really make a difference to readability. Instead it’s the font style that plays an important role in a fonts readability.

Decorative or cursive font styles are harder to read for many users, but especially problematic for users with dyslexia. Small font sizes, italicized text, and all uppercase text are also difficult for users. Overall, larger text, shorter line lengths, taller line heights, and increased letter spacing can help all users have a better reading experience.

To use the Lens of Font, ask yourself these questions:

Is the design flexible enough that the font could be modified to a comfortable reading level by the user?

Is the font style easy to read?

Lens Of Images and Icons

They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Still, a picture you can’t see is speechless, right?

Images can be used in a design to convey a specific meaning or feeling. Other times they can be used to simplify complex ideas. Whichever the case for the image, a user who uses a screen reader needs to be told what the meaning of the image is.

As the designer, you understand best the meaning or information the image conveys. As such, you should annotate the design with this information so it’s not left out or misinterpreted later. This will be used to create the alt text for the image.

How you describe an image depends entirely on context, or how much textual information is already available that describes the information. It also depends on if the image is just for decoration, conveys meaning, or contains text.

“You almost never describe what the picture looks like, instead you explain the information the picture contains.” — Five Golden Rules for Compliant Alt Text

Since knowing how to describe an image can be difficult, there’s a handy decision tree to help when deciding. Generally speaking, if the image is decorational or there’s surrounding text that already describes the image’s information, no further information is needed. Otherwise you should describe the information of the image. If the image contains text, repeat the text in the description as well.

Descriptions should be succinct. It’s recommended to use no more than two sentences, but aim for one concise sentence when possible. This allows users to quickly understand the image without having to listen to a lengthy description.

As an example, if you were to describe this image for a screen reader, what would you say?

Source (Large preview)

Since we describe the information of the image and not the image itself, the description could be Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night since there is no other surrounding context that describes it. What you shouldn’t put is a description of the style of the painting or what the picture looks like.

If the information of the image would require a lengthy description, such as a complex chart, you shouldn’t put that description in the alt text. Instead, you should still use a short description for the alt text and then provide the long description as either a caption or link to a different page.

This way, users can still get the most important information quickly but have the ability to dig in further if they wish. If the image is of a chart, you should repeat the data of the chart just like you would for text in the image.

If the platform you are designing for allows users to upload images, you should provide a way for the user to enter the alt text along with the image. For example, Twitter allows its users to write alt text when they upload an image to a tweet.

To use the Lens of Images and Icons, ask yourself these questions:

Does any image contain information that would be lost if it was not viewable?

How could I provide the information in a non-visual way?

If the image is controlled by the user, is it possible to provide a way for them to enter the alt text description?

Lens Of Keyboard

Keyboard accessibility is among the most important aspects of an accessible design, yet it is also among the most overlooked.

There are many reasons why a user would use a keyboard instead of a mouse. Users who use a screen reader use the keyboard to read the page. A user with tremors may use a keyboard because it provides better accuracy than a mouse. Even power users will use a keyboard because it’s faster and more efficient.

A user using a keyboard typically uses the tab key to navigate to each control in sequence. A logical order for the tab order greatly helps users know where the next key press will take them. In western cultures, this usually means from left to right, top to bottom. Unexpected tab orders results in users becoming lost and having to scan frantically for where the focus went.

Sequential tab order also means that they must tab through all controls that are before the one that they want. If that control is tens or hundreds of keystrokes away, it can be a real pain point for the user.

By making the most important user flows nearer to the top of the tab order, we can help enable our users to be more efficient and effective. However, this isn’t always possible nor practical to do. In these cases, providing a way to quickly jump to a particular flow or content can still allow them to be efficient. This is why “skip to content” links are helpful.

A good example of this is Facebook which provides a keyboard navigation menu that allows users to jump to specific sections of the site. This greatly speeds up the ability for a user to interact with the page and the content they want.

Facebook provides a way for all keyboard users to jump to specific sections of the page, or other pages within Facebook, as well as an Accessibility Help menu. (Large preview)

When tabbing through a design, focus styles should always be visible or a user can easily become lost. Just like an unexpected tab order, not having good focus indicators results in users not knowing what is currently focused and having to scan the page.

Changing the look of the default focus indicator can sometimes improve the experience for users. A good focus indicator doesn’t rely on color alone to indicate focus (Lens of Color), and should be distinct enough to easily allow the user to find it. For example, a blue focus ring around a similarly colored blue button may not be visually distinct to discern that it is focused.

Although this lens focuses on keyboard accessibility, it’s important to note that it applies to any way a user could interact with a website without a mouse. Devices such as mouth sticks, switch access buttons, sip and puff buttons, and eye tracking software all require the page to be keyboard accessible.

By improving keyboard accessibility, you allow a wide range of users better access to your site.

To use the Lens of Keyboard, ask yourself these questions:

What keyboard navigation order makes the most sense for the design?

How could a keyboard user get to what they want in the quickest way possible?

Is the focus indicator always visible and visually distinct?

Lens Of Layout

Layout contributes a great deal to the usability of a site. Having a layout that is easy to follow with easy to find content makes all the difference to your users. A layout should have a meaningful and logical sequence for the user.

With the advent of CSS Grid, being able to change the layout to be more meaningful based on the available space is easier than ever. However, changing the visual layout creates problems for users who rely on the structural layout of the page.

The structural layout is what is used by screen readers and users using a keyboard. When the visual layout changes but not the underlying structural layout, these users can become confused as their tab order is no longer logical. If you must change the visual layout, you should do so by changing the structural layout so users using a keyboard maintain a sequential and logical tab order.

The layout should be resizable and flexible to a minimum of 320 pixels with no horizontal scroll bars so that it can be viewed comfortably on a phone. The layout should also be flexible enough to be zoomed in to 400% (also with no horizontal scroll bars) for users who need to increase the font size for a better reading experience.

Users using a screen magnifier benefit when related content is in close proximity to one another. A screen magnifier only provides the user with a small view of the entire layout, so content that is related but far away, or changes far away from where the interaction occurred is hard to find and can go unnoticed.

When performing a search on CodePen, the search button is in the top right corner of the page. Clicking the button reveals a large search input on the opposite side of the screen. A user using a screen magnifier would be hard pressed to notice the change and would think the button doesn’t work. (Large preview)

To use the Lens of Layout, ask yourself these questions:

Does the layout have a meaningful and logical sequence?

What should happen to the layout when it’s viewed on a small screen or zoomed in to 400%?

Is content that is related or changes due to user interaction in close proximity to one another?

Lens Of Material Honesty

Material honesty is an architectural design value that states that a material should be honest to itself and not be used as a substitute for another material. It means that concrete should look like concrete and not be painted or sculpted to look like bricks.

Material honesty values and celebrates the unique properties and characteristics of each material. An architect who follows material honesty knows when each material should be used and how to use it without tarnishing itself.

Material honesty is not a hard and fast rule though. It lies on a continuum. Like all values, you are allowed to break them when you understand them. As the saying goes, they are “more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.”

When applied to web design, material honesty means that one element or component shouldn’t look, behave, or function as if it were another element or component. Doing so would cheat the user and could lead to confusion. A common example of this are buttons that look like links or links that look like buttons.

Links and buttons have different behaviors and affordances. A link is activated with the enter key, typically takes you to a different page, and has a special context menu on right click. Buttons are activated with the space key, used primarily to trigger interactions on the current page, and have no such context menu.

When a link is styled to look like a button or vise versa, a user could become confused as it does not behave and function as it looks. If the “button” navigates the user away unexpectedly, they might become frustrated if they lost data in the process.

“At first glance everything looks fine, but it won’t stand up to scrutiny. As soon as such a website is stress‐tested by actual usage across a range of browsers, the façade crumbles.” — Resilient Web Design

Where this becomes the most problematic is when a link and button are styled the same and are placed next to one another. As there is nothing to differentiate between the two, a user can accidentally navigate when they thought they wouldn’t.

Can you tell which one of these will navigate you away from the page and which won’t? (Large preview)

When a component behaves differently than expected, it can easily lead to problems for users using a keyboard or screen reader. An autocomplete menu that is more than an autocomplete menu is one such example.

Autocomplete is used to suggest or predict the rest of a word a user is typing. An autocomplete menu allows a user to select from a large list of options when not all options can be shown.

An autocomplete menu is typically attached to an input field and is navigated with the up and down arrow keys, keeping the focus inside the input field. When a user selects an option from the list, that option will override the text in the input field. Autocomplete menus are meant to be lists of just text.

The problem arises when an autocomplete menu starts to gain more behaviors. Not only can you select an option from the list, but you can edit it, delete it, or even expand or collapse sections. The autocomplete menu is no longer just a simple list of selectable text.

With the addition of edit, delete, and profile buttons, this autocomplete menu is materially dishonest. (Large preview)

The added behaviors no longer mean you can just use the up and down arrows to select an option. Each option now has more than one action, so a user needs to be able to traverse two dimensions instead of just one. This means that a user using a keyboard could become confused on how to operate the component.

Screen readers suffer the most from this change of behavior as there is no easy way to help them understand it. A lot of work will be required to ensure the menu is accessible to a screen reader by using non-standard means. As such, it will might result in a sub-par or inaccessible experience for them.

To avoid these issues, it’s best to be honest to the user and the design. Instead of combining two distinct behaviors (an autocomplete menu and edit and delete functionality), leave them as two separate behaviors. Use an autocomplete menu to just autocomplete the name of a user, and have a different component or page to edit and delete users.

To use the Lens of Material Honesty, ask yourself these questions:

Is the design being honest to the user?

Are there any elements that behave, look, or function as another element?

Are there any components that combine distinct behaviors into a single component? Does doing so make the component materially dishonest?

Lens Of Readability

Have you ever picked up a book only to get a few paragraphs or pages in and want to give up because the text was too hard to read? Hard to read content is mentally taxing and tiring.

Sentence length, paragraph length, and complexity of language all contribute to how readable the text is. Complex language can pose problems for users, especially those with cognitive disabilities or who aren’t fluent in the language.

Along with using plain and simple language, you should ensure each paragraph focuses on a single idea. A paragraph with a single idea is easier to remember and digest. The same is true of a sentence with fewer words.

Another contributor to the readability of content is the length of a line. The ideal line length is often quoted to be between 45 and 75 characters. A line that is too long causes users to lose focus and makes it harder to move to the next line correctly, while a line that is too short causes users to jump too often, causing fatigue on the eyes.

“The subconscious mind is energized when jumping to the next line. At the beginning of every new line the reader is focused, but this focus gradually wears off over the duration of the line” — Typographie: A Manual of Design

You should also break up the content with headings, lists, or images to give mental breaks to the reader and support different learning styles. Use headings to logically group and summarize the information. Headings, links, controls, and labels should be clear and descriptive to enhance the users ability to comprehend.

To use the Lens of Readability, ask yourself these questions:

Is the language plain and simple?

Does each paragraph focus on a single idea?

Are there any long paragraphs or long blocks of unbroken text?

Are all headings, links, controls, and labels clear and descriptive?

Lens Of Structure

As mentioned in the Lens of Layout, the structural layout is what is used by screen readers and users using a keyboard. While the Lens of Layout focused on the visual layout, the Lens of Structure focuses on the structural layout, or the underlying HTML and semantics of the design.

As a designer, you may not write the structural layout of your designs. This shouldn’t stop you from thinking about how your design will ultimately be structured though. Otherwise, your design may result in an inaccessible experience for a screen reader.

Take for example a design for a single elimination tournament bracket.

Large preview

How would you know if this design was accessible to a user using a screen reader? Without understanding structure and semantics, you may not. As it stands, the design would probably result in an inaccessible experience for a user using a screen reader.

To understand why that is, we first must understand that a screen reader reads a page and its content in sequential order. This means that every name in the first column of the tournament would be read, followed by all the names in the second column, then third, then the last.

“George, Fred, Linus, Lucy, Jack, Jill, Fred, Ginger, George, Lucy, Jack, Ginger, George, Ginger, Ginger.”

If all you had was a list of seemingly random names, how would you interpret the results of the tournament? Could you say who won the tournament? Or who won game 6?

With nothing more to work with, a user using a screen reader would probably be a bit confused about the results. To be able to understand the visual design, we must provide the user with more information in the structural design.

This means that as a designer you need to know how a screen reader interacts with the HTML elements on a page so you know how to enhance their experience.

Landmark Elements (header, nav, main, and footer) Allow a screen reader to jump to important sections in the design.

Headings (h1 → h6) Allow a screen reader to scan the page and get a high level overview. Screen readers can also jump to any heading.

Lists (ul and ol) Group related items together, and allow a screen reader to easily jump from one item to another.

Buttons Trigger interactions on the current page.

Links Navigate or retrieve information.

Form labels Tell screen readers what each form input is.

Knowing this, how might we provide more meaning to a user using a screen reader?

To start, we could group each column of the tournament into rounds and use headings to label each round. This way, a screen reader would understand when a new round takes place.

Next, we could help the user understand which players are playing against each other each game. We can again use headings to label each game, allowing them to find any game they might be interested in.

By just adding headings, the content would read as follows:

“__Round 1, Game 1__, George, Fred, __Game 2__, Linus, Lucy, __Game 3__, Jack, Jill, __Game 4__, Fred, Ginger, __Round 2, Game 5__, George, Lucy, __Game 6__, Jack, Ginger, __Round 3__, __Game 7__, George, Ginger, __Winner__, Ginger.”

This is already a lot more understandable than before.

The information still doesn’t answer who won a game though. To know that, you’d have to understand which game a winner plays next to see who won the previous game. For example, you’d have to know that the winner of game four plays in game six to know who advanced from game four.

We can further enhance the experience by informing the user who won each game so they don’t have to go hunting for it. Putting the text “(winner)” after the person who won the round would suffice.

We should also further group the games and rounds together using lists. Lists provide the structural semantics of the design, essentially informing the user of the connected nodes from the visual design.

If we translate this back into a visual design, the result could look as follows:

The tournament with descriptive headings and winner information (shown here with grey background). (Large preview)

Since the headings and winner text are redundant in the visual design, you could hide them just from visual users so the end visual result looks just like the first design.

“If the end result is visually the same as where we started, why did we go through all this?” You may ask.

The reason is that you should always annotate your design with all the necessary structural design requirements needed for a better screen reader experience. This way, the person who implements the design knows to add them. If you had just handed the first design to the implementer, it would more than likely end up inaccessible.

To use the Lens of Structure, ask yourself these questions:

Can I outline a rough HTML structure of my design?

How can I structure the design to better help a screen reader understand the content or find the content they want?

How can I help the person who will implement the design understand the intended structure?

Lens Of Time

Periodically in a design you may need to limit the amount of time a user can spend on a task. Sometimes it may be for security reasons, such as a session timeout. Other times it could be due to a non-functional requirement, such as a time constrained test.

Whatever the reason, you should understand that some users may need more time in order finish the task. Some users might need more time to understand the content, others might not be able to perform the task quickly, and a lot of the time they could just have been interrupted.

“The designer should assume that people will be interrupted during their activities” — The Design of Everyday Things

Users who need more time to perform an action should be able to adjust or remove a time limit when possible. For example, with a session timeout you could alert the user when their session is about to expire and allow them to extend it.

To use the Lens of Time, ask yourself this question:

Is it possible to provide controls to adjust or remove time limits?

Bringing It All Together

So now that you’ve learned about the different lenses of accessibility through which you can view your design, what do you do with them?

The lenses can be used at any point in the design process, even after the design has been shipped to your users. Just start with a few of them at hand, and one at a time carefully analyze the design through a lens.

Ask yourself the questions and see if anything should be adjusted to better meet the needs of a user. As you slowly make changes, bring in other lenses and repeat the process.

By looking through your design one lens at a time, you’ll be able to refine the experience to better meet users’ needs. As you are more inclusive to the needs of your users, you will create a more accessible design for all your users.

Using lenses and insightful questions to examine principles of accessibility was heavily influenced by Jesse Schell and his book “The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.”

(il, ra, yk)

[davidbruceconn]

Neglected Infectious Diseases on a Rapidly Shrinking Planet

David Bruce Conn, M.S., Ph.D.

Planet Earth is shrinking.  It has been shrinking for centuries, but the rate of its shrinkage has accelerated at a staggering rate during the last century, and within the past two decades has left our heads spinning.  To a geologist, such reduction in the earth’s size may not be an empirical reality.  But it is a reality to a biologist who studies the dispersal of species, a political scientist or economist concerned about increasing demands for multinational cooperation, or a climatologist who questions how human activity on one continent might influence weather patterns halfway around the globe.

           The effects of living in a smaller world pervade virtually every aspect of our lives. Even my work in writing is radically different than it was in the larger planet of a decade ago.  I type the words into my computer, which is equipped with a transmitter that links to a wireless hub in the other room, which then sends my work along instantaneously to my readers all around the world to read my article only minutes after I have written it.  By logging onto the internet, my computer can send the same article to any one of my colleagues or readers on any continent within minutes.  The ease and speed of communication such as this open myriad opportunities for global commerce, technology transfer, and political dialog.  These opportunities are enhanced by the speed at which modern airplanes allow us to travel physically around the globe, and the volume of cargo that we can transport on superfreighter ships and jumbo cargo jets.

           As we take advantage of these opportunities, it becomes increasingly important that we understand the far-flung localities with which we are now associating and doing business. We may profit from the breakdown of barriers to our isolation, but we also inherit the problems that were once too distant to concern us.  The things that affect the economy and politics of our new neighbors now affect the economy and politics of our own homeland.  Diseases play a major role in shaping the economic, political, and cultural features of any society; so it follows that we can survive and flourish on a shrinking planet only if we understand human diseases that affect other parts of the world.

           Many years ago, I decided to devote myself to the study of parasitic diseases.  By a time-honored convention, biomedical scientists use the term parasitic diseases in reference to diseases caused by worms, arthropods (such as mites, ticks, and insects), and complex single-celled protists.  Diseases caused by protists and fungi, as well as by the much simpler bacteria and viruses are generally referred to as microbial diseases due to the microscopic size of the pathogenic organisms. However, pathogens (literally, makers of disease) of all these groups have a parasitic lifestyle.  Both parasitic and microbial diseases are types of infectious diseases, since they involve one organism infecting another. Many infectious diseases are also communicable diseases, since they can be passed, or communicated, directly from one person to another.  However, not all infectious diseases are directly transmissible; many require time to develop in the external environment, or inside another host such as a mosquito.  The breakdown into parasitic and microbial is artificial in many ways, but reflects the historical development of parasitology and microbiology as separate fields of biological science.

           When I began studying parasitology several years ago, I came to realize that, like me, most Americans, Europeans, and people from other highly developed parts of the world are rather sophisticated in their general medical knowledge, but relatively uninformed about the plight of their neighbors in less affluent circumstances. In tropical and subtropical areas around the globe, the climate has allowed parasitic diseases to flourish over the millennia, while such diseases have been suppressed by the temperate climates to the north.  Because we live in areas where most parasitic diseases are not major problems, it is natural for us to assume that these diseases either do not exist or are of only minor medical concern.  Two events early in my career as a university professor made this point clear to me.

           The first occurred shortly after U.S. troops began returning from the First Gulf War in the early 1990s, and the media began to report that some U.S. military personnel had contracted a “rare disease.”  Despite its great “rarity,” medical authorities had been able to identify the disease as leishmaniasis.  The newspapers and media did not report that each year, what they incorrectly referred to as a “rare disease” is contracted by more than twelve million people, severely debilitating and disfiguring several million of them, and killing thousands more.  The reports also failed to note that the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health organizations had for many years considered leishmaniasis to be one of the major tropical diseases – one of the most significant human health problems in the world.

           The second event involved a brief encounter with one of my students at St. Lawrence University, who had just returned to our campus in New York State from participating in the university’s Kenya Semester.  She had picked up a benign infection of some sort, so we had a short chat about human health problems in tropical Africa.  She informed me confidently that there were indeed a few tropical infections one might encounter in Africa, but that they were “no big deal.”  What she did not know was that African trypanosomiasis (African sleeping sickness), regarded as an oddity by many westerners, infects one million people each year and is on the top tropical diseases list of several organizations. She was not yet aware that onchocerciasis, or river blindness, completely blinds tens of thousands of people each year in parts of tropical Africa (see information box below).  She was not aware that tropical Africa is the world’s primary center of schistosomiasis, a disease that kills as many as one million people each year and infects up to 300 million—nearly equivalent to the entire population of the United States. She did not realize that every year in Africa, one million children die of malaria alone, and that 100 million people around the world are infected with malaria—nearly a third the number of the  entire population of the United States! 

           The first anecdote is not a testimony to any ignorance unique to the American press, nor is the second a reflection of unusually poor education on the part of American universities. Rather, both reflect a lack of information available to educated citizens of prosperous temperate-zone countries regarding the nature of global human health problems.  Few westerners realize that the major diseases of affluent developed countries in temperate climates are comparatively minor problems to the majority of the world’s populations, who live primarily in tropical and subtropical Third-World countries.  On a global scale, cancer and heart disease rank below such diseases as malaria, schistosomiasis, and soil-transmitted helminths (parasitic roundworms) as significant human health problems.  One reason is simply that cancer and heart disease are often, though not exclusively, maladies that affect a disproportionate number of older people.  Another reason is seen in the sheer numbers; cancer and heart disease affect only a fraction of the number of people who are affected by the major parasitic diseases.  For example, it is estimated that more than one billion people – nearly one of every six people on the planet – are infected by soil-transmitted helminths.

           Why do these major diseases occur primarily or exclusively in tropical Third-World countries? There are many contributing factors, including the relative shortage of healthcare and sanitation technology in economically underdeveloped countries.  But the most important factor is simply that most of the parasites and/or the organisms that transmit them are restricted to tropical climates. That such geographic variations in disease should occur as a normal part of biotic distribution patterns should come as no surprise.  This is basically the same reason that polar bear attacks on humans are more likely to occur in the Arctic than in deserts or tropical rain forests, but crocodile attacks don’t occur in the Arctic.  Whether we are dealing with polar bears and crocodiles or tapeworms and blood flukes, most animals are restricted in their geographic distribution, and it is a basic biological principle that life is vastly more diverse in the tropics.  This higher biodiversity is not restricted to pretty tropical birds and butterflies; many more species of human parasites also live in the tropics, as do their insect vectors.

           Historically, people in one part of the world have paid scant attention to the health concerns peculiar to people living in other regions.  Exceptions can be found among medical workers who deal with international tourists, military personnel who often encounter exotic diseases in foreign countries, and public health professionals who deal with the ever increasing tide of immigrants from developing countries.  With expanding global travel and commerce causing our planet to shrink at a rapidly accelerating pace, the time has come for this to change.  For this and other humanitarian reasons, an initiative known as “The Great Neglected Diseases” campaign was begun in the 1980’s by the Rockefeller Foundation and other groups around the world that were seeking to increase an awareness among westerners of the plight of tropical developing countries in dealing with health problems unique to or vastly more devastating in the tropics.  A major focus of this program was to generate funding for and increase research activity related to tropical parasitic diseases.  This program and more recent initiatives like it, including the Neglected Tropical Disease program of the U.S. Global Health Initiative, have enjoyed varying degrees of success, but much remains to be done.  The original Great Neglected Diseases program inspired my undergraduate college course of that same name, which I have now taught at several universities to growing and increasingly enthusiastic groups of bright young people.  We can only hope that as we continue to learn about parasites, we can help to make the diseases they cause become less “neglected”, and in turn ultimately to come to be problems that are not as “great” as they now are.  Otherwise, as our planet continues to shrink, our problem with parasitic diseases will loom larger than ever with each passing year.

Further Reading:

Chomicz, L., D.B. Conn, J.P. Szaflik, and B. Szostakowska. 2016.  Newly Emerging Parasitic Threats for Human Health: National and International Trends. BioMed Research International – Parasitology, Special Issue. Hindawi Publishing Corporation, London, United Kingdom. 73 pp.

Conn, D.B. 2009. Presidential address: Parasites on a shrinking planet. Journal of Parasitology 95: 1253-1263.

Conn, D.B.  2011. Neglected Diseases, Emerging Infections, and America's Global Health Century.  Jefferson Science Distinguished Lecture Series, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.  Transcript and streaming video:  https://2009-2017.state.gov/e/stas/series/180126.htm

Conn, D.B. 2014. Aquatic invasive species and emerging infectious disease threats: A One Health perspective.  Aquatic Invasions 9: 383-390.  http://dx.doi.org/10.3391/ai.2014.9.3.12h

*** Prof. Dr. David Bruce Conn is a biomedical scientist who has conducted research and taught at universities around the world, and advised governments and industries about parasitic and other infectious diseases, invasive species, and environmental health for 40 years.  (Disclaimer: Dr. Conn is a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of State on issues of health and foreign policy, but the contents of this post are his own views and do not officially represent any unit of the U.S. federal government).

Copyright © 2017 by David Bruce Conn.  Free use and distribution permitted with attribution.