#sanae also has pretty art and a really good theme to her name

[slugpup2]

literally the day touhou 19 was announced i finally did touhou sort since i was like "hey a new game is probably gonna be announced soon so i might as well do this before we get some newhus"

anyways the top 5 do not surprise me in the slightest but i feel like it gets kinda weird afterwards

[ichika27]

The World Ends with You

(Yeah, it’s the same screenshot I used for my post about ep. 1. I couldn’t get a new one so...)

Ah, first week without the TWEWY anime to look forward to. I’m actually kinda sad cause I’d miss waiting for the episode every Saturday night (Ani-One posts theirs on that day here). I have some stuff I wanna say about the anime so I thought I’d make one of these plus this is a good way to end the twewy anime blog post series I make every week. I’ll try not to spoil until the very bottom of this post which will have a spoiler warning.

Also, this will be very long and rambly as most of my fandom posts are haha.

Story:

A boy named Neku wakes up in the middle of Shibuya with no memory and finds himself as a player in the Reaper’s Game. For a week he must partner up with a girl named Shiki and both of them must complete missions, battle creatures called noise, and survive as failure meant erasure.

Characters:

Neku Sakuraba - our main protagonist who somehow lost his memories and is now playing the Reaper’s Game. He’s a loner who isn’t too keen on getting close to anyone let alone working alongside anybody - unfortunately for him, it’s a requirement if he wants to survive. As a player he has an assortment of abilities to fight off noise and other enemies (in the game this meant he can use a lot of different pins).

Shiki Misaki - the nice and friendly Shiki becomes Neku’s partner in the Reaper’s Game. Unlike Neku she has knowledge of the game and fills Neku in on things he doesn’t understand. Her ability is to control her stuffed toy called Nyantan/Mr. Mew which she uses in combat.

Beat - the tough skateboarding player, he’s somewhat more like the typical hot-blooded shounen protagonist when compared to Neku. He’s protective of those he care about especially his game partner, Rhyme. He uses his skateboard in battle.

Rhyme - Beat’s game partner who is a lot kinder and calmer than him. Rhyme tends to be the one to reason with Beat when needed and the two are always seen together.

Yoshiya Kiryu - a mysterious boy who seem to know more than he lets on and acts at times acts suspicious. He prefers to be called by the nickname Joshua.

Sanae Hanekoma - a cafe owner who helps out Neku and the others and would give them advice. His advice prove to be very helpful and Neku takes them to heart. Seem to have a lot of knowledge about the Reaper’s Game but doesn’t seem to be a reaper himself.

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Thoughts:

(I tried my best to not be spoilery in the character descriptions so some names weren’t written in full)

The World Ends with You (or in the original Japanese “Subarashiki Kono Sekai”/It’s a Wonderful World) is an anime based on the video game of the same name. It had to compress an entire game’s worth of story within it’s 12 episode run which meant they cut out a lot of things and combined some scenes to quickly run through them. It’s theme song is the anime version of the game’s original OP “Twister” although this wasn’t what was originally planned but an incident involving the band who sang the original theme forced them to make changes. The original voice actors from the game also reprised their roles for the anime. The series is created to be watched before the release of the long-awaited sequel game.

The art style is made to be similar to it’s game version (with a bit of change to adapt it as an anime like when it comes to body proportions). They also retained the effect of the characters from the UG (players/reapers) being brightly colored while those from the RG having darker/muted colors. While the noise are obviously cg, I personally liked this since they’re said to be from a different plane anyways so it’s a nice contrast to those from the UG and RG. They had to update the setting though as years had passed since the original game’s creation and they had to model anime version of Shibuya to what it’s real life counterpart now looks. The characters are also given smartphones instead of the flip phones they had in the game (anime-only watchers who are gonna play the game would have to get used to them still using flip phones though lol).

Okay so story-wise... it’s rushed. Of course it is. They shortened it so that what’s left would mostly be important plot points from the main story but they cut out many scenes that consist of character interactions and several little things that could’ve fleshed out the characters more. The gameplay is also made simpler with some mechanics taken away and the mini games weren’t adapted (RIP to Reaper Creeper and Tin Pin Slammer, especially the latter as you’re severely missed). The game boast an assortment of characters and some NPCs have their own stories but due to the anime’s limited run time, they had to either be cut out (and are just given cameos) or given smaller roles (and their stories weren’t adapted). They did, however, give a few bits and pieces of information that weren’t in the game such as some details about certain characters and one supporting character was given a bit more screentime that they did in the game version.

Despite the rushed nature of the series (which may or may not affect how one views the story itself), the anime made sure to adapt several important scenes and the dramatic stuff is made worse... like, they really had to make some deaths harder to take. The battle scenes were nice as well although my biggest complaint about them is that the boss fights were over too quickly. There were scenes that were changed for the anime version and there are those that I liked and those I didn’t but there are many which I think was as good as the game’s version.

Do I recommend the anime? The game is better, the characters and story are more fleshed out and the way the character/relationship development happens is better paced so of course, me, biased already would tell you to play the game instead if you haven’t yet. Do I recommend those who played the game to watch the anime? Yes! Yes I do. I think the anime is better watched when you’ve played the game and know the stuff that they cut out cause it’ll make better sense that way. Plus I found it enjoyable seeing the scenes from the game animated and the characters are speaking whole dialogues and moving. It’s great!

Even if the anime wasn’t perfect, like I mentioned before, they did their best to condense the entire main story in a 12 episode series and it tried to be as faithful as it could to the original story so despite the deviations when it comes to how things got to the way they did, if you summarize important plot points, they would be the same (with some details changed). Overall, it was very enjoyable and it wasn’t as bad as I feared when I heard how many episodes the anime was going to have.

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Some spoiler thoughts:

It would’ve been better if the anime had more episode count than just 12. Cramming a 3 week story of game into just 12 made the thing very rushed with Week 1 only getting three episodes, Week 2 getting four, and final Week getting five. They had to get to the good stuff so they cut off a lot of scenes where the characters are interacting with each other which means they suddenly get character developments and relationship developments too quickly. It might not be that obvious to anime-only watchers but to me, it felt kinda sudden and it feels like it doesn’t work out well story-wise since Neku had to learn how to trust other people and make friends and with how he started vs. how he came out of it contrasting each other.

By the way, they made the characters look good in the anime. Especially Joshua. Have you seen Joshua? He’s so pretty in the anime. I want a picture of him I could stare at anytime I want to (I do not own a phone, sadly).

I like how they gave Eri more scenes though and that they changed her outfit for the anime so she won’t look exactly like UG!Shiki. All of her scenes though made me feel like I wish the anime gave closure to Shiki’s own story by showing us her and Eri making up. Another scene I liked in the anime is Neku’s fanboying of CAT when he finds out the truth. It was adorable.

Some info was taken away from the anime. Beat and Rhyme leaving home had scene dialogue and unlike Beat just narrating it in-game but they didn’t mention specifically why he was angry and his trouble at home. Joshua wasn’t present when Sota and Nao gave Neku a pep-talk either which is a shame cause I think that helped Josh as well. 

I mentioned before how the anime made things go too fast. They cut off chunks of not-main-plot story that let the characters interact with each other more which means each game day is shortened as well. I think it made sense that Neku wakes up at the scramble in the end and not stressed out because he didn’t go through as much as his game counterpart did. That said, game Neku learned a lot from more than just the main cast in the game compared to the anime so I like his character development in the game better.

They took away Tin Pin Slammer. I am sad and disappointed. I was hoping so bad for Another Day to be adapted even if it’s an OVA. That and the ramen incident are part of Josh’s week which meant some side of him wasn’t shown (I mean, anime fans don’t know he wasn’t there on week 3 since he’s busy playing a kid’s game elsewhere and how he could talk about food like he is from a cooking anime). Speaking of Josh, they made him very suspicious from the get-go in the anime. I understand as there’s a limited run-time and they can’t really afford to be subtle about it but it meant some of the fun interactions with Neku is gone and so are some scenes where they actually got along. At least they had ice cream together, I guess?

(I have more to say when it comes to Joshua cause he’s my fave character but this is long and my thoughts on it would make this way longer. I might make another post.)

In the end, it wasn’t perfect but the anime was fun and enjoyable enough that I found myself looking forward to it every week. Seeing scenes I recognize from the game in animated form (with voice acting!) felt exciting and awesome. I’ll miss this show and I still wish it was longer.

If you’ve read this far well, thank you. And also I’m confused why but still hopefully that was a good time-killer. I have so many other things I wanted to comment on but that’s for another time. Maybe.

[translationandbetrayals]

Strong female leads are necessary in today’s media

In today’s westernized media we see how female characters have gone from being a price for the male protagonist, to being a sidekick, to be the protagonist of their own stories. We’ve seen how this female leads are in the rising especially in western media. Even if strong female leads has been present in anime for a long time, the western media had female character often associated to common woman-y tropes, meaning that female characters are usually passive, and or inactive, with goals and achievements associated directly to the male leads. Besides, diverse representation helps to show more possible realities to girls. This is necessary since women are now more than the half of the earth population. This encourage girls to take different career paths that can be useful to society, and lastly  diverse representation also opens new work field for diverse creators to express their ideas, therefore it opens new points of view in media for groups that are often misrepresented or completely erased from today’s media.

Frist of all, we need to analize some media, the occident media  is great enough to show tropes. Is easy start with fairy and folks tales, then go to Calderon de la Barca and end with Henrik Ibsen and “doll house”.Being the folks tales histories to teach small lesson to children, the little girls often are depicted as diligent, pretty and disgraced for a wicked stepmom (or a old female figure) who make her live miserable, most of the time her youth beauty grace and elegance help her enough to marry a man (mostly a powefull one). Or at the end of the story is the sacrifice of the “Prince”,“white knight”, “dumb with a heart of gold” or ”lazy but clever” is given her as a trophy .Calderon de la Barca in “the life is a dream”(1635) show us the story of Segismundo the royal prince traped in a tower, Rosaura helps to introduce the miserable character of the prince, also Rosaura is a strong and funny woman that travel dressed as a male for the sake to get his pride back, she achieve this making the prince Astolfo marry her in the end of the story:Is a sad fact that Rosaura finds his “lost father” isn’t touched in deep . We can go with all the stories of Jane Austen(1775-1817) who touch a lot this themes, but the queen jewell is “house doll”(1879) a controversial history how depicted “the perfect women” young, beautiful, obedient and a good mother. But really worry because she broke the law (get a bank loan) for hers husband behalf, despite of that, she show herself cheerful and diligent; the first part of the theatre show how his husband treats her gently, but he never talks about important stuff, always talking with her like a child.

The objectification, lack of motion and achievements are looked a lot with a “men perspective”. Being the achievements the most corrupted of all, because a women to be full has to be a wife, a mother, and someone pretty.

As we said before, increasing the female lead shows that woman can pursue any career. With this in mind, is also necessary to talk about female content creator, and how this diversity showcases new realities from another point of view. A few examples of this can be found in the Works of Sayo Yamamoto, a female anime director known for her Works on Michiko to Hatchin, A woman named Fujiko Mine and the critical acclaimed Yuri!!! On Ice. As usual with artists, Yamamoto’s vision is plastered in any of her Works, usually strong and sexy female leads, like Michiko or Fujiko Mine. Both of this works features female protagonists, independent woman that use her sexuality and skills to achieve their goals, with elements of pop art and dark visuals. Yamamoto’s most known work to date is Yuri On Ice, an anime written by another woman: Mitsurou Kubo. Yuri On Ice touch on topics of figure skating, and, more importantly, it depict a same sex relationship and the homophobia surrounding this sport. The fact that these women are the ones bringing the discusión to these topics, i sana example of why it is important to have diverse creators. Everyone construct their realities from their own experiences, most of the time minorities have similar experiences, and they need a médium to put these experience and show them to the world. With this these experience are out for everyone to see, and to other minorities to relate.

We have seen more and more how the diversity of roles of women in series and films have increased, this has clearly had effects in our modern society.In the different series we can find models to follow, for example, I have seen in my friends and other people who started playing volleyball, made clubs or teams and became very passionate about this sport, this happened in particular due to manga and anime “haikyuu "Which is about a young man who loves volleyball and tries to tell us that anyone is capable of playing it. What I want to say with this point is that it was enough with a single series (something that may seem very trivial) to encourage many people to be passionate about something and feel capable of doing it, this phenomenon has happened a lot, such as the "Scully effect” “, which you can investigate more on the internet. Because of that it is important the existence of the diversity of the roles of women in series and films (especially strong ones, for instance: scientists, leaders, presidents, etc.) and thus give a boost to the new generations of women, who can achieve anything that they propose to themselves.

this, in my opinion, contributes positively to the society, because it will be more women in areas where before there were almost only men, as in science and technology, thus generating a faster and more complete development in all areas of society, and also the world will more equitative and inclusive

Analyzes were our culture and way of thinking comes from and how we look at the other, take a pause, for leaving the prejudices away, you can look at their flaws and ask How to fix it? Because no one has to feel like an object. See things from a different perspective help a lot to make good and touching art that inspire people to try new things. Have strong women’s and men’s who show us new ways to live together, with empathy, and understand.We are better working together,making a more rich society learning from everyone because, we all can change. That’s is a world worth of living.

Essay made by: Ken Miyake M ; Rocío Rojas G.; Francisca Valenzuela A.