#the fafner rewatch

[fenrhi]

Girls when they rewatch Soukyuu no Fafner for the 48th time and they still notice new things

[magnoliawaltz]

Talking about Fafner Exodus drama cds: The Follower 1 and 2

Spoilers for both Exodus and The Beyond ahead.

(I had some details wrong the first time I wrote this, I'm reposting with those details corrected. As this drama cd hasn’t been translated I didn’t want to spread wrong info with my half-assed report)

I thought I would have a lot less to talk about these cds, because in Exodus the character’s intentions and interactions felt a lot more obvious, if not shallow, to me. The thing with Fafner is that the more it expands the scope of the world, the more the individual characters’ writing suffer -- it becomes more about how they embody their duties towards said world.

Even little Miwa already had the sacrificial mentality at age 5. It’s just so sad. But the extended sequence where Michio appears as a memory of the mir and they walked together and talked was so emotional, I had tears in my eyes. I don’t have much to talk about the first cd besides the fact the family reunion between Yumiko, Michio and Miwa was great.

The concept of the Mir appearing as the parent they can’t see anymore was very interesting. It’s at times like these that the sekai-kei aspect of the narrative really shines. In the second cd, only when the three key characters make their personal choice is when the path to the island’s future opens. More on that later.

Maya seems to have come with an understanding with her father, already having seen too much of herself and her hate in him and his actions. And Kazuki is still in that vague state where “mom” is both mom and not mom since he doesn’t remember her much (I remember Fumihiko clearly stating “that” is not Akane, in Gone/Arrive but the concept was evolved, and it is the mir after all). I got taken aback with how curt Soushi was with Kouzou. I knew their relationship really was not good at all (with good reason, since his dad raised him to be a “tool”), you can really hear the strain in his voice -- At the start he is using keigo but by the end has stopped. Only to use it again when saying good bye. How very Soushi. It just left me wanting to know more on their family situation. Need me a whole spinoff about that, specially when it comes to Soushi and Tsubaki’s mom.

So the three choices they made were to overcome the willingness to sacrifice, ask for further dialogue and decide to leave the old world. That’s how Kouzou resumes the choices. I had got this wrong the first time I wrote, as I was trying to much to fit it into my theory without listening again, because oh my god I really can’t stop seeing the Hegel influence everywhere now. 

So in Exodus these three concepts that derivate from this same word with contradictory meanings (aufheben) become manifest as the mir’s blessing. It’s is the same as Kouzou said, just changes the order of things. They choose: 

1. to negate the old ways of Tatsumiyajima, an island hiding from the world, only preoccupied with maintaining it’s own people’s subsistence; 

2. to preserve its essence, the mixing with the festum which possibilites the dialogue between them, here symbolized by the Esperanto; 

3. to elevate itself, which I think means to overcome the need to sacrifice themselves and other people to let their loved ones live.

It’s the whole elevating of the vessel thing -- the show has used pottery as a metaphor for this whole process since the start. How The Beyond is going to do that is what I’m curious about now.

The thing is the trio's choices here, in turn, becomes their destinies in The Beyond.

Soushi has his old existence and old way of thinking “negated” and he is reborn, most likely repeating the process forever. Maya has her existence as a human “preserved”, accepting a mind that will continue to change and a body that will continue to age as parts of herself. And Kazuki has his existence “elevated” to something less than festum and more than human, more akin to a god, losing part of his human heart in the process.

(　ﾟдﾟ)ﾎﾟｶｰﾝ

Everything makes sense now, even the push and pull between the trio, that I couldn’t understand at first and thought was flimsily written in Exodus, specially the interactions between Soushi and Maya that left me ? at the time, makes sense when I think of the characters as both embodying these qualities and going through that sublimation process themselves. Even the initial estrangement The Beyond caused is more understandable.

However, I have to say, it sure is still frustrating to see these characters I love so much become mere puppets of fate at the hands of the writer. Must Soushi suffer so much like that forever????? (Edit: oh I was so innocent about this. “Soushi” is “fine”, the other two? Not so much). Sure, I’ll see how much of my opinion will change when I finally finish The Beyond. I need to get to that before BTL’s BD comes out. We’ll see.

[shrine-of-the-exoletus]

things i ought rewatch (wikipedia incomplete list expansion disclaimer):

fafner

witchblade

claymore (reread too)

shamanic princess

[ssiegfriedsystem]

philip my little meowmeow

im so normal about him. sorry for rewatching krw instead of actually processing fafner exodus i miss philip a lot

[lisiprom]

omg they're so cute. Wish I had some spare money to try and get them.

I need to rewatch whole Fafner when I feel better mentally since I haven't seen the last season yet. But with all irl bs I'm really not in mood for angst and suffering

[sawsdoe]

having this weird urge to rewatch fafner even though i know that’s the devil speaking

[bobgoesw00t]

Have you watched The Beyond? If not, are you planning to?

I’ve seen all but the last part, but seeing as how I forget most of what’s happened, I’m gonna rewatch the entire franchise (including Right of Left) from the beginning before I actually watch it xD

[criaturamonocromatica]

26. Chinese Bellflower | Campainha da China | 桔梗

[arsnovacadenza]

Planning to rewatch the entirety of Fafner TBY just to understand Maris better but like...is seeing Kazuki sad all the time even worth it?

[lady-byleth]

I feel like we as a fandom don't acknowledge the fact Kazuki didn't know Soushi was alive when Nicht took him nearly enough.

Whenever Nicht taking Soushi is brought up I always see people talk about how Nicht abducted or kidnapped him, but I rarely see people mention that to Kazuki (and the rest) Soushi was dead.

And that's so important because Kazuki...he thought Soushi was dead and wanted to fucking die because of it.

Soushi's supposed death finally made him suicidal and he was so prepared to go through with it, go to the North Pole to get his revenge and die, that his father allowed it.

There was literally no way for Fumihiko to talk Kazuki out of going that he finally gave up and let him go. Imagine that! His son tells him he's going on a suicide mission and Fumihiko literally does not see any way to stop him!

Kazuki loves Soushi so much he can't live without him, a fact his own father is fully aware of, and it breaks my heart.

[fenrhi]

what she says: I hate Fafner

what she means: it’s driving me insane that I can STILL notice new things about this anime no matter how many times I watch it. Soushi dropped his cup of coffee in ep2: did he do that because he was frustrated or because he was still feeling Kazuki’s pain of losing his (Fafner) arm? Speaking of Kazuki, when I noticed how his lack of self-worth permeates almost all his interactions with the other characters, I could not stop fixating on it. When Soushi asks him “How do you feel after riding a Fafner?” and Kazuki answers “Nothing much”(even though footages of him screaming in agony play in the background), it’s so fucking telling. Even in Kazuki’s conversation with Fumihiko (which is funny), he still puts his dad’s needs over his own safety (”There”s no way I wouldn’t come back! I mean, you can’t even cook without me”). It would be easy for new watchers to interpret this as “arrogance”, but then you reach ep15 and you’re confronted with the reality that, yes, this guy’s mental health is in shambles. Also I still have no idea what the fuck Kenji and Kazuki’s deal is in ep1, and the only explanation that makes sense is “oooh the Rituals are intricate....I know they are....”

[magnoliawaltz]

Did Kazuki have the ring marks on his new arm?

Kazuki received the Mir's blessing in episode 24 of Exodus. That's when his right arm grew back and at first it was golden, like a festum's.

These last three episodes are quite frenetic, so there are almost no scenes were his hands and fingers are visible. Entirely on purpose. But there was this emblematic shot in episode 25, where he has no ring marks.

Very symbolic of what would be his role in The Beyond.

[jennhoney]

Fafner and I had a frozen treat. Yesterday I was in the fetal position watching a game show and today I sat up! And rewatched that same game show as a friend sat with me. Also there was a good sunset.

[monstersqueen]

Well, I’m going to have to rewatch Fafner Exodus, i forgot half of the plot and of the new characters. barely remember who died and who survived. (for a second i forgot canon died :((( and then i remembered :(((( )

on related news WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING in beyond? i’ve only found 2 on 3 episodes (well, six, but i haven’t even found 4-6 raw) subbed and. WHAT THE FUCK.

please tell me what tags we’re using? is it just that no one on tumblr is watching and blogging on it?

[postguiltypleasures]

Opera Cycle

I’m in the middle of a slightly irregular way of watching all of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen. I’ve now seen Das Rhinegold for the first time and rewatch Die Walküre. In over a week I’ll see Siegfried and then Götterdämerung two weeks later. I saw those two first years ago, during the Metropolitan Operas last time the used the Otto Schenk production. (Controversial opinion: I actually love the machine in the current Robert Lepage production. I like opera sets to be spectacular and not too literal, which this is. I can’t wait to see the last two operas with it.)

I did buy the recently rereleased P. Craig Russell comic book of the cycle. My collection would be less me without it. I’m reading the comics between operas, sort of as recaps. Part of the reason Der Ring has such a pull on me is that I saw a parodic sketch of a movie pitch where the plots were all described in under five minutes around the same time I started pouring over the D’Aulaire’s Norse Gods and Giants after years of obsessing over their Greek Myths. Not only did the plot sound ridiculous when summarized, there was also a distinct wrong feeling to some of the plots. It’s bad enough that in Das Rheingold the growth and maintenance of the golden apples of youth and immortality is attributed to Freya where as in Gods and Giants it’s attributed to Indunn. On top of that there is something disturbing about reading a story about Indunn being kidnapped and then hearing another version of the same story only she’s Freya and sold as payment for building Valhalla.

 (While writing this I pulled out my copy of Gods and Giants and reread Freya’s back story in that book. I forgot that she, her brother and their father are actually post-war hostages, which is also very disturbing.) I’m not sure how much of this is D’Aulaire and Wagner using different source materials (Prose Edda and Poetry Edda vs Nibelunglied and Völsunga. I just pulled this of Wikipedia, I haven’t seriously looked into it) or just censoring stories for children. In any case every once in awhile I’d come across something with Norse Gods I’d start thinking about Der Ring. Norse Gods show up with a surprising frequency, even before Chris Hemsworth…

The weird thing is, fully emerging myself in Der Ring as an adult, it feels like it corrects a lot of irritations I have with the fantasy genre. There tends to be a lot of nostalgia in plots of modern fantasy, a yearning for a mysterious age of heroes. While the impetus for creating this cycle probably was a yearning like that for Wagner, it is not in the text itself, and that is refreshing. (Of the Wagner operas I’ve seen, that nostalgia is most in the text for Der Meistersingers von Nuremberg and Lohengrin. The latter puts surprising detail historical specificity a lot for what is essentially a fairy tale.)

I also really like how anti-“the hero gets the princess because he’s the hero” it is. It’s also something that seems to get lost when summarizing the operas and makes watching them in full thrilling. There are essentially two starting points of the series, the first is in the opening scene itself where after being romantically rejected by all three Rhinemaidens, Albrecht steels the gold they exist to protect, and renounces love so that he can fashion the Rhinegold into a ring that will allow him to get great wealth. The other starting point is before the opera begins, when the god Wotan (Odin, and in the comic book version Votan) hires the Giants Fafner and Fasolt to build Valhalla promising his sister-in-law Freya as payment, despite not consulting with either Freya or his wife Fricka about this payment. (He also willfully misunderstood what Fricka meant when she said she wanted a home in which to settle down.) 

I was always troubled by how in summary people tend equate Albrecht giving up pursuing the Rhinemaidens (who don’t want him), and later Fafner and Fasolt agreeing to accept the gold as a replacement for Freya (who also doesn’t want them) as renouncing love for money/power. It is very male focused, and Wagner doesn’t really give the women in either situation much opportunity to say how they feel in these degrading situations. But while watching these now, in 2019, regardless of Wagner’s intentions, it really feels like all the male characters already made the choice between love and money when they decided to treat women as objects. And they’re so used to that misogyny that they only realize what it means when the power vs love dichotomy moves from romantic to fraternal love. (Albrecht enslaving his brother Mime, Fafner killing his brother Fasolt.) The “wrong” feeling I had as a child first introduced to actually works in the operas’s favor. In a way Albrecht’s choice and curse just turns the subtext of the Gods’ relationships into text and that underlined how building Valhalla, supposedly for their protection and preservation, dooms them.

(This is picked up in Die Walküre with Sieglinde’s forced and abusive marriage to Hundig, and the girl who Siegmund tried to save from a forced marriage. There isn’t anything like revenge until Götterdämerung and there it’s completely undermines the “hero gets the girl” conclusion of Siegfried. As the first time I saw any of these I saw Siegfried and Götterdämerung without the previous two operas, I can say the latter feels like an about face without the first two operas.

It’s amazing and unsettling how relevant this all feels.

(And more than ever, I really want to separate the artist from the art while that’s feeling less and less like a possibility.)

[siriusloire]

I got inspired as soon as I rewatched the first episodes of Fafner EXODUS for this work.

Canon and Sakura's friendship is the most underrated one in the entire series! Sakura was always there for her, she teached to her to write in Japanese, she was the first one of the other pilots to accept her as a friend and helped her to befriend with the others and to open up a bit and, most important, she was the person Canon trusted to the point to reveal to her the feelings she felt for Kazuki. And in the scene when Mark Sein gets activated after three years explains that clearly.

Sakura looks worried at Canon. She could have looked to the monitor or to something else. But she choose to look at her best friend, to be sure to be ready to support her, telling her that Kazuki would have been fine and able to return to them after using Mark Sein after a very long time.