people on tumblr really is sleeping on those great anime
wolf rain
Blue gender
Monster
Now and Then, Here and There
Big O
s-CRY-ed
Witch Hunter Robin
Paranoia Agent
Samurai 7
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo
Trinity Blood
Blood+
Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit
Ristorante Paradiso
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TW: sexual violence
Finished Now and Then, Here and There and my head is buzzing. I think the most upsetting thing was the pro-life bent to Sara’s storyline. Still scratching my head about that because. Genuinely what the fuck ???
Sara, like other girls/women Hamdo captures, is subjected to forced rape by the soldiers for breeding. This is horrifying, and the writing thankfully treats it like the horror that it is, and is never gratuitous. It’s not needlessly there, it’s there to reflect the real world genocides and brutality the series was based on, and fits in with the grim realism the series depicts of war.
Sara kills her would be attacker, escapes from prison hood on her own, and starts a life in Zari-Bars (I can’t rmbr the name of this place sorry😭) All of this would be fair I think, but things get off the rails very fast. In Zari-Bars she’s revealed to be pregnant, which is absolutely horrifying. Sara, a child, seriously struggles with the trauma of being kidnapped, raped, and now pregnant. All of this is VERY serious and distressing subject matter, and the anime really drops the ball in handling it.
The anime shows her in desolation over her trauma, but has a big emotional lesson where she tries to crush her abdomen with a rock and Shu repeatedly puts his hand there to save the baby, after slapping her for saying she wishes she and the baby were dead? The scene paints Sara in the wrong for wanting her baby to die. Then when Sis, the maternal figure who took her in, is on her death bed, her dying words to Sara are not to hate the baby. There’s such a pro-life bent to this storyline, prioritizing the babys life over Sara’s trauma and body autonomy? If she WASNT a child and got pregnant through consensual sex, it would still be weird as fuck for everyone to be going on about saving the baby!!! now factor that in with it was through rape, and she’s also a child!!! What the fuck were the writers thinking?
What makes this all EVEN weirder?? The doctor OFFERS an abortion in the very scene he reveals she’s pregnant. It’s not like she has no access to any safe or healthy abortion methods, and so aborting the child would be a threat to her life. It’s presented to us as existing in this world. Which makes the pro-life stuff, even fucking worse/weirder/more misogynistic.
Ultimately the Sara pro-life bent is the biggest stain on Now and Then, Here and There, and is what I think prevents it from being elevated to top echelon of anime. It’s very disappointing because of the incredibly serious and delicate subject matter, and the severity of the content and themes presented. Everything else in the series about war and violence is done very well, making this even more awful. I also read the anime’s director sexual harassed Sara’s voice actor, who I’m so sorry for, so sexist awful men making sexist awful writing choices. Shame because of how much else the series has to offer. Sara deserved so much better.
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Now and Then, Here and There (今、そこにいる僕, Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku)
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pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc
against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"
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One of my favourite mundane weirdnesses about Edinburgh is that we set the big clock visible approaching the station to be 3 minutes fast to make sure people are on time for their trains. My Favourite mundane weirdness of Edinburgh is that we check this by firing a cannon.
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Now and Then, Here and There (今、そこにいる僕, Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku)
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