#was because she was a japanese character in a western animated production

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

I came into Transformers as a fandom via watching some of the ‘older’ media* as a late teen, so I could be considered a ‘latecomer’ in some aspects. And honestly, as a latecomer, it was really jarring to go and find older posts back when Miko was considered the most annoying thing in the world. When I came in, the general atmosphere was really one where a lot of people really warmed up to her as a character. People liked their ‘unhinged’ female characters. She was silly and delightful to them. And I really liked that sort of environment. So it does become a real shock when I scroll back far enough and I encounter like, genuine Miko hate. Especially the more overtly racist and misogynistic stuff around her; that stuff just jumps out at you like a snake in the grass.

*Meaning the parts of the franchise that were not releasing new material at the time; my intro was Prime.

#tabby says something #like i think there was this comic comparing g1 vs prime #and they were comparing carly with miko and it was like #miko was painted as this 'otaku' weeb fantasy that was completely out of line with how she was in the show #and i really did feel like the only reason they had read her as such when they made the comic #was because she was a japanese character in a western animated production #anyways #transformers prime for ts #racism discussion

[melonteee]

It irritates me how they changed Nami's relation to Nojiko in the LA not only because it takes away from their characters but also because its a huge missed opportunity to expand on the source material. Tattoos are often frowned upon in japanese culture so with that in mind, Nojiko's tattoo makes her stand out in a way that already implies a connection to Nami by her character design alone. The reveal that she got it in solidarity to nami only makes this explicit but in a sense isn't even strictly necessary to communicate the idea.

This gets lost in translation in the manga and anime for obvious reasons but an adaptation could have made a point by trying to work that bit of cultural context in. Instead, Nojiko just randomly has a tattoo. Why.

Its probably not a concept thats big enough to even complain about since its a small detail that can easily get overlooked in a huge production but its something where I've specifically been interested in how they will handle it and the end product is just kinda disappointing.

Oh but don't you know anon? They REALLY focused on the small details here they were OBSESSED with the small details cause they wanted to show they understood this story soooooo much.

*looks into the camera*

No but seriously, I wouldn't say it's a detail that gets lost from manga to anime, I'd say it's a detail that gets lost within localisation. America don't have as negative a connection to tattoos as Japan does, so of course the tattoo idea is much heavier to a Japanese audience. That indeed would've been a fantastic thing to adapt and localise in terms of what these tattoos mean to get it across to a western audience and show just how serious and compassionate Nojiko is in her love for Nami - possibly change the design of her tattoos to be a bastardised version of Arlong's tattoo so she still gets looked at for it but is still connected to Nami.

Instead, she has them in this version because.....they're cool, I guess. And she just hates Nami so much she needed to get bigger and better tattoos to one up her.

lol.

#ask

[klaasje]

plz share your miku essay 👀

DISCLAIMER. this was written in the throes of 2020 lockdown fever and it shows lol

THE GIRL WHO’LL LIVE FOREVER

until tonight, i didn’t know hatsune miku wasn’t real. my hazy assumption was that someone ‘played’ hatsune miku in the same way that mark ruffalo plays the hulk - i thought there was an actress out there who provided the basis for her body and voice. i was right about one of these things, but only accidentally, and remarkably wrong about the rest of it. i am writing this because a) i have literally nothing else to do and b) because i thought the rabbit hole i just fell down was really cool! cool, strange, fascinating, and also kind of sad. anyway. close your eyes and pretend it’s 2007:

yamaha’s vocaloid software is grounded in the concept of ‘voices’. there’s the VOCALOID program itself, the act of writing music that can be played by a machine, and then there are the voices you can use to synthesise it. in 2007, there were 3 voice banks available: a western voice bank named ‘sweet ann’, CV01, and CV02.

CV01 (character voice 1) was developed by crypton media as the first japanese voice bank. character voice 1, as names go, is not particularly appealing - so to increase interest in VOCALOID software and attract a userbase willing to learn it, the team behind CV01 decided to put a name and a face to the voice they’d created. it went, from what can be discerned via google, the wayback machine, and a scattering of translated interviews, something like this: hatsune miku’s voice was based on vocal samples given by saki fujita, a well-established voice actress and living human being. the voice bank itself was built by designer wataru sasuski. her physical appearance, including her iconic outfit and improbably huge aquamarine pigtails, were created by kei garou, a cartoonist and illustrator. everything else was left intentionally as a blank slate - and in the ensuing years, her cult following of fans have risen to the challenge of filling in the gaps. for better or worse.

one of the few canonical facts about hatsune miku is her age. she is, according to her creators, a sixteen year old girl from a distant future where music was forgotten. her outfit reflects this, styled in a fashion reminiscent of seifuku-style school uniforms: skirt, shirt, stockings, and a tie. i did not know there was a specific word for that until just now. anyway - hatsune miku was sixteen in 2007, and she has been sixteen ever since.

i have watched… more than a few vocaloid AMVs tonight! the oldest ones resembled a cross between second life and final fantasy 8 cutscenes - bizarre, rigid avatars performing bizarre, rigid choreography in a number of inexplicable locales, such as endless fields of wheat, a gothic cathedral, and (most memorably), a busted nuclear reactor - but eventually i reached the live recordings, which is where things graduated from funny-weird to weird-weird. the production value, compared to those early videos, was off the charts. the songs, as far as i could tell, were the same. this is often lauded as one of the most unique, inimitable facets of the ‘miku experience’ - her songs are written (and choreographed) by her fans. world is mine, one of her most popular live performances at 8 million hits, started life as one of those stilted, second life-esque animations.

so miku’s songs are written by her fans. hatsune miku, the character, the experience, the mythos - is collectively created by her fans. which begs the question: who are her fans? who created the youtube videos? who has the time, resources, and sheer dedication necessary to create AMVs for an ever-young, ever-pleasant, angel-voiced teenager, with a sylphlike body and a skin tight school uniform?

i didn’t make the connection, at first. maybe this was naive of me. while absorbing the first few miku live videos, hearing her babytalk, watching her perform - my initial assumption was that miku audiences would primarily be teenagers (and their grim-faced parents), people who could relate to miku as an aspirational ‘peer’. her dance moves, especially, led me down this route - is fortnite still big with the youth? i’m 22, i have accepted that my days as someone who knows What’s Big With The Youth are behind me, but i still hear vague echoes from time to time. fortnite dances. tiktok. hatsune miku. etc. what was i saying. oh yeah. miku dances with a camera in mind, the way a tiktok influencer dances: effervescent, front-facing, with hand gestures that beg to be imitated. the more i watched her the more i recognised the unnerving, uncanny quality emanating from the stage. i realised where i’d seen it before. we live in a remarkable age of animation: where AAA studios are creating death scenes so realistic they can provoke a trauma response in the people animating them, where a horse’s bollocks will infamously shrink when exposed to pixel snow, and where hatsune miku dances with unerring, flawless fluidity, while the gleaming stage lights fall perfectly on her virtual body. 

she looks so at home in 3-dimensional space, especially in the newest videos, it's easy to forget she isn't there. she looks real. like you could touch her. she will never, of course, be real. you will never, of course, touch her. but you can touch her in other ways. you can write songs with her voice and make her dance to them; you can manipulate the movements of her body, every minute bob of her pigtails, puppet her, propel her. is that the appeal? is that why her audiences look the way they do? i am thinking about tabula rasa and whether the miku slate was ever truly blank. it makes me sad. there’s something poignant about the intersection of humanity and technology that vocaloids represent. they were the first crossing of a border that will continue to be crossed for the rest of the 21st century. in a virtual age, with virtual bodies, what constitutes as ‘real’? where, and how, do we draw a line?

to my surprise, there is a miku song i genuinely like: ‘miku’ ft. hatsune miku, by anamanaguchi. the music video strips the avatar away and leaves the voice bare, nothing but the blood and guts of a vocaloid, synthesizers and computers in an empty recording studio - and this nakedness simultaneously dispels and intensifies my discomfort. it reminds me that the miku vocaloid is more than the sum of its parts. despite the controversy surrounding the fanbase who propeled hatsune miku to fame, there is still something undeniably compelling about this. about her. maybe it’s that animal hindbrain piping up, pricking up the hairs on the back of my neck: this is not a human voice. this is something other, something new. the lyrics do not shy from this. miku, miku, what’s it like to be you? followed by, play me, break me, make me feel like superman, you can do anything you want - and, most poignantly, you found me here inside a dream, walk through fire straight to me. fire walk with me. miku’s existence is a lynchian fever dream; and what’s more, in this song, she knows it. i’m not saying hatsune miku and laura palmer need to be compared and contrasted. but i’m also not NOT saying that. i am saying that this song, like every other miku song, is the catchiest song in the world. like it was developed in a lab to be an ear worm. i suppose, in some ways, that’s the point.

#as a reminder to anyone reading this I HAD NOT BEEN OUTSIDE FOR DAYS. i was not SLEEPING. i wass DEPRESSED. i was REWATCHING TWIN PEAKS #ask #anonymous

[prismatic-bell]

So I got part of Avenue Q stuck in my head, and you know how people say something was "a product of its time" when talking about racism, sexism, etc.? It is occurring to me I finally get that. Because while sometimes it's just...wrong and was always wrong, I have to wonder how many people who either weren't into pop culture in the late 90s/early 00s or simply weren't alive then don't realize Christmas Eve is supposed to be poking fun at weeaboos. The show was written at a point in time where America just kind of went crazy about Japanese pop culture for awhile. Like. Everyone. Everywhere. A major pop singer (Gwen Stefani) literally paid for a group of "kawaii girls" to follow her around as part of her image, and Smile.dk (which had zero Japanese members) debuted with a song called "Butterfly" in which the singer "searches for a man all across Japan, just to find my samurai" and featuring some non-lyric vocalizations that I genuinely hope weren't supposed to sound like Chinese tonals because they really sound like someone botching Chinese tonals (and, you know, assuming All Asian Nations Are Japan). Pikachu was on the front of Time magazine, most of the weekday afternoon programming block on Cartoon Network was anime, kimono-style tops (although usually facing the wrong way) were a huge trend, and for those who still wanted tees or regular shirts with long sleeves, well...

Do I have any idea what that says? None. Did I own one of these? I did not--I owned three of them. All three of mine looked like lacquer boxes with koi or traditional flower designs. I found out later the writing on at least one of mine was complete gibberish. The designer just picked some kanji they thought looked cool. And yes, basically every top I owned that wasn't one of these was a kimono-style. Wearing chopsticks in your hair became A Whole Thing if you weren't flatironing your hair (and yes, people used actual chopsticks, not hair sticks--I'm not even sure hair sticks were really a thing in American fashion until this point). On the internet side of things, 2channel was possibly getting shut down and 2chan sprang up, and quickly got so popular in the western hemisphere that we got--yep--4chan, the same year Avenue Q debuted. 4chan is weeb culture, or at least, that's how it started. (In fact I think it's also where "weeaboo" was coined.) A couple of years later, MCR would include Japanese verses in a song just...because. Because that's what we were like at that point in time. 1998-2005 (or so) was when America had its own taste of Japonisme. And into all of this you get Christmas Eve. Who's loud, and brash, and assertive--not at all a docile me-love-you-long-time weeb fantasy. Her English is a little broken, but she's not stupid--in fact as far as we can tell she's the most educated person on Avenue Q (Kate and Princeton both have BAs and Rod probably has a master's in business, but Christmas Eve has two separate master's degrees, which she earned in her secondary language). Her accent is thick, but there's literally a song ("Everyone's A Little Bit Racist") where some of the characters get called out on laughing at her for it. And--crucially--the white man she marries is so far removed from anything related to pan-Asian culture in America he doesn't know he shouldn't call her Oriental. Is this absolutely terrible given he's marrying a Japanese woman? Yes. Is it kind of baffling that another character immediately says "the term is Asian-American," since Christmas Eve refers to herself as Japanese? Also yes. Is it weird that a guy who (according to the timeline) was born in 1970 would be using Oriental? Extremely. Is it a dig at the exoticizing that was going on at the time? Absofuckinglutely. (And that's why that anachronism is there. It's very much pointing out that society was treating Japanese pop culture the same way our Victorian forebears treated Japan in general in the Meiji era.) And like. I'm not saying Christmas Eve is some kind of unproblematic depiction here by any means. Even in 2003 her accent was...icky, and now it's downright unacceptable. And there's the question of whether they fell into one stereotype ("Asians are so smart!") while trying to mock another ("if you can't speak English you must be stupid"), and whether that's an acceptable trade-off. I'm not even going to get into her name being a Christmas cake joke because....look, I could sit here and explain all the puns in the names but that's a whole other post and it's literally easier to say "Brian, Kate, and Nicky are the only characters whose names aren't jokes."

But there's a huge nuance to why she was written as this bizarre stereotype-but-not-but-yes-but-not-but-yes-but-maybe mashup, and I think there's a big possibility you literally just had to be there to understand. It really truly genuinely is a product of 2003. You could not write Christmas Eve in 1983 and have her make any damn sense. You could not write her in 2023 and have her come across as anything but wildly racist. Like. Maybe that phrase isn't just don't-be-mean-to-your-elders bullshit. (At least, not all of the time.)

[yume-fanfare]

Ok I'll bite. What is kageki shoujo about

(I did look it up! It's just that imo those synopses tend to be misleading or incomplete in one way or another... If you wouldn't mind, then asking someone is better)

i'd love to explain!!!

have you heard about takarazuka revue? it is an all-female japanese theater troupe founded in the 1910s that perform extravagant broadway-like musicals, where both female (musume-yaku) and male (otoko-yaku) roles are played by women. it's a counterpart of sorts to kabuki, a classic form of japanese theater where only men are allowed to perform.

most of their productions are adapted from western literature or manga, and their most iconic play is based on the rose of versailles, a manga about the french revolution. our protagonist in kageki shoujo is sarasa, a 15 year old girl whose dream is to be the main character in that play. and to achieve that, she joins the troupe's boarding school to learn theater! though in this anime takarazuka is named kouka for some reason

it is a highly demanding and competitive environment, so the manga treats sensitive themes such as csa, eating disorders or stalking. they're well-handled but quite triggering to watch so im warning you in advance 🫡 (there might be a couple of other things of note in the manga only, but i haven't read that far yet)

and if you've read synopses you might have also heard about sarasa's counterpart and other main character, ai, a girl who was forced to quit her idol group after a scandal and enrolled the school as well. the show focuses on these two, but also their classmates and some seniors. the characters all have really interesting and developed storylines, i really enjoyed that aspect of it

so, to sum it up, kageki shoujo is a slice of life drama manga about a musical theater school! the anime is a really good adaptation too that i definitely recommend checking out. adds build up in just the right places and everyone's singing voices are wonderful, even if it cuts out some things here and there. really really good piece of media as a whole

^ the main girls!!!

extra note: if you look up the manga, you'll notice there is kageki shoujo: the curtain rises and kageki shoujo!!. you have to read curtain rises first, they're separate mangas because there were some magazine publishing problems. the anime is titled kageki shoujo!!

#very nice cast very nice story very nice execution #def recommended #i watched the anime first and am now reading the manga and it's a pretty good order 👍 #kageki shoujo #kageki shoujo!! #anonymous #preguntas

[beevean]

People when Guts has a mental breakdown after a lifetime of trauma which leads him to almost rape the woman he loves but stops himself before the deed is fully done and is so disgusted with himself that he starts distancing himself from her and accepting other people in his life to look after her while also accepting that he may never again have the right to even speak to her after what he'd almost done yet will still fight tooth and nail to protect her even if he'll never truly be able to atone: Fucking disgusting mysoginistic bullcrap! Shame on the author for being such a sexualizing creep!

People (not the same people but still) when Lenore tricks Hector into having sex with her on order to slip an enslavement ring on him so as to magically bound him to her and then spends her time making jokes about him being her pet, about his dick and about wanting a new bedroom and who then kills herself upon realising that she may in the future be subjected to the same fate as him while only giving a shallow "yeah sorry about that": OMG! So romantic! This show truly has some incredibly deep and complex writing! Good thing this wasn't written by a sex pest or something!

Is it sexism against men, or good ol' xenophobia that leads many people to be much harsher to Japanese manga and anime than Western products? You decide :)

I wouldn't even compare Guts to Lenore. Guts assaulted Casca after weeks of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that made him vulnerable to the temptation of the Beast of Darkness. I am not excusing him or downplaying Casca's trauma in any way... but the story didn't, either. Casca, understandably so, was terrified of Guts, and stayed terrified of him for months. Many years in real life. And, as you said, Guts regretted his actions as soon as he realized what he was doing, and that slip was what made him accept the help of Farnese and Serpico: he accepted that he could not take care of Casca by himself. He was a danger to her.

Lenore can't be compared to Guts. It was not an act of irrational aggression. She wanted him in the most vulnerable position possible, to coax him into falsely pledge loyalty to her and that stupid ring. It was premeditated and... well, I'd say cruel, but even in the most Lenore apologist position I can get myself into, she literally treated Hector as an animal to be "rescued". Well meaning? At best. But still inherently dehumanizing. Which alright, she's a vampire, it makes sense that she'd see a human as an animal. And alright, I can see a plotline where she learns to see Hector as a person. But... it never happened. We went from "I made you into my pet" to a brat making dick jokes and pouting that she feels useless after a time skip.

And anyway my issue isn't even with her, it's with Hector and how he shows zero resentment after his understandable breakdown in the S3 finale. I honestly can't read his character, assuming he has one by this point.

I know that people are tired of my bitching about Lenector, but I'm sorry, no matter how hard I try to understand the appeal, the dynamic, the relationship, the "poetry" of their fates, you cannot reconcile Lenore's action in S3 with Lenore's actions in S4 without resorting to some severe rape apologism or straight up denial (because some seem to believe that if you consent at first, then it's automatically okay). The Lenore presented in S4 is a tragic villain coming to terms with her role in the council, the lack of respect from the others, the fear that she might become a monster, and the fact that she started to bond with someone she previously only saw as a "problem to solve"... but in order to accept this at face value, we have to ignore that she resorted to rape and deception to bring her victim to his lowest point. We are meant to pity the rapist. We are meant to see Hector "forgiving" her (assuming he did) as him growing up. There is no other way around it.

#anti netflixvania #tw rape

[icarus-suraki]

I've been thinking about a post that's been circulating here about the subtle racism present in Western/white danmei fandom (which is definitely there, whether one realizes it or not). And it reminded me a lot of 1990s anime fandom.

First, for the record, I'm white. Just so we're clear. Okay, moving on:

The DIC dubbed version of Sailor Moon was broadcast when I was 13, in 1995 (and I jumped right on it too). Around that same time, the SciFi channel was showing a handful of animes in rotation on Saturday mornings. There were a few dubbed anime and even fewer subbed anime on VHS at Blockbuster. 9 times out of 10, no one ever really knew how to pronounce "Neon Genesis Evangelion" or "Urusei Yatsura." And the general perception of "anime" in general was that it was raunchy at the mildest and only got progressively more pornographic from there.

But as these things started to appear in the US and be available to a wider audience, all these racist stereotypes of Japan and Japanese people started to surface too. To quote someone from the time, "Isn't manga the kinky stuff Japanese businessmen read on the train?" That was the perception: it's all dirty. (Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Ronin Warriors and some other early arrivals helped with that some, because they were clearly children's cartoons. But then we had to deal with the whole "children's cartoons" issue when looking at NGE and Miyazaki's movies. But I'm digressing and glossing over whole decades of localized anime.)

tl;dr: in the early and mid 90s, if you were a fan of anime you were very much a consumer of a "foreign" product.

So we loved it but there was a very steep learning curve when it came to actually understanding what we were watching, especially as the internet got bigger and better and we learned that, wait, there are outer senshi? There are whole other storylines?

And there was an entirely different visual language and cultural foundation to these shows (and later movies and manga and so on). Why the heck does she have a giant drop next to her head? Why is she holding that piece of paper? What does it mean to work at a shrine? A shrine to what? What's the deal with the cherry blossoms? Why does he have an expression like that on his face? What does it mean when the characters do this? And this was in the 90s, so the internet then is not what it is today. We had to fumble our way around and learn the details of these "foreign" cartoons, while contending with the stereotypes other people (usually adults lol) had about Japan, anime, and Japanese people. But we did learn! We'd read, we'd hit up the internet as much as we could, we'd talk to one another, we'd go to events and conventions and just try to pick up as much as we could. Because we were curious! We wanted to know!

We were lucky because within a few years we had Princess Mononoke in movie theaters (not many, but some) and Cowboy Bebop popped up and Gundam Wing came along and the internet got better and anime stopped being such a fringe interest and now there's better information and understanding (at least a little).

That's a long story to say that the Western danmei fandom needs to do the same thing: get down into the cultural source and learn stuff.

You have got to acknowledge that you are engaging with works from a culture that is not your own. You can't just slap Western concepts onto it and try to shove an entirely different culture into the framework of your own culture. That's not going to work. And, no, you won't understand everything right off. There's layers in here and you have to acknowledge that and start learning.

You're engaging with concepts and worldviews that are almost certainly not the same as your own, my fellow white danmei fans, and you have got to realize that. Step back from your notions and your expectations and, yes, your racism and stereotypes, and start looking at the complexity of an entire culture out of which a character you love has arisen.

Once upon a time, someone here on Tumblr wanted to do a presentation about how "magical girl" characters like Sailor Moon and Sakura Kinomoto were inherently feminist. The problem was that this person never even considered the ways "feminism" might look or be discussed in Japan. This person was imposing Western feminism on characters that were created entirely outside that worldview/mindset. Don't do that. It's unfair to the creator, it's unfair to the creator's culture, and it actually kind of stifles your opportunity for learning.

Will I ever understand Japanese culture as well as a Japanese person? Absofuckinglutely not. But I know more than I once did, which means I can enjoy more aspects of animanga than I used to. I can get more of it and I'm less likely to misinterpret the creator's intentions. I'm not that great at it and I love a good translator's note, but I can get more of some of it.

So dig in to the cultural foundations and stop shoving Western cultural concepts onto works that weren't created in that milieu. (Yes, I said "milieu!") Get curious! I am begging you to stop assuming and get curious! Ask yourself "why?" and then get to researching!

For your first assignment, stop writing fanfic where Lan Wangji sounds like a robot. He uses short, perfect, referential phrases because he's elegant and educated. In English, the most elegant characters use elaborate language. Not so in many Chinese works: the fewer and more perfectly chosen the words, and the more meaning lying within those words, the more refined and educated the character is. It's like he's so good with language that he doesn't even need to use it anymore.

At least, that's my superficial understanding at the moment. I've got tons more to learn.

So let's get learning and stop shoving our expectations, assumptions, worldview, stereotypes, and cultural baggage onto works that exist and were created outside all of that. Let the works stand on their own and learn their foundations.

#noises from issy #western danmei fandom #oldtaku #just some thinky thoughts #also i accidentally minored in asian studies #because i just got interested in japan and japanese culture #so you never know what might come of some learning #get curious #start learning

[saiskulls-110]

also as per my last ramble in the tags i want to add that though i absolutely understand and also feel frustrated by the show never bringing up that some women aren't interested in romance, or dating, or anything like that; i feel like the people writing angry reviews about it need a little more perspective.

japan still struggles with sexism. every aspect of it. and we know this. but they've dealt with it in completely different ways to it than their western/european counterparts. in japan it is STILL common for a girl's dream in life to be getting married. and it is glorified.

teen girls really do rely on romance as a crux of their culture there (and of course there are exceptions, but it is far more common than you can imagine—), and that's not just an adults view on it.

the manga industry has been coming out with, even for a non-jp audience, incredibly progressive stuff recently. unfortunately, when it comes to anime, the amount of hoops artists have to jump through to get it greenlit for a show is crazy- and that's on top of the struggle of having their original work (most likely) edited by a company first.

it's going to be very common that work that would have been explicitly, comfortably queer gets watered-down simple, or removing any real moments that would canonize a character's queerness, or at worst borderline fetishised in its final product. that being said, romantic killer FEELS like queer content. moments just Make Sense and feel Familiar through an aro/trans/gay lens.

i'm not going to pull up any scenes in particular, not just because it's a good watch i recommend if you want to tear up, but because it's the show In General— beginning to end, that feels like a familiar experience. If you take any moment in the show to try and view it as already-established representation it is glaringly obvious that:

Makoto has a little crush on Junto. Anzu is, if not arospec, pan, and has no problem being clear that she's fine with romantic interaction with men, women and enbies without a second thought as to their gender. Saki at one point had a crush on Anzu, she might still now! Hijiri struggles with understanding what other people find fun, that goes for romance too, and in small scenes he makes it clear that he cares for anzu just as much as the other prettyboys.

Even Kazuki and Junto feel like they have something going on at times — but that one's probably just my own lil headcanon.

Point is: Good, queer anime is hard to come by. I'm not saying 'take what you can get' or 'it won't get better', but show some understanding as to the differences in culture and how each scene might be read differently to someone that grew up in that space.

we got The Stars Align go watch that. for frame of reference that show didn't get it's final episode finished because there wasn't enough interest from japanese viewers and the showrunners didn't want to keep funding something with a good trans-non-binary character.

#sai talks anime #romantic killer #positive frame of mind for this one boys #forgive me for having hope 🙏

[historyhermann]

D4DJ Review

D4DJ is music anime directed by Seiji Mizushima. It is part of a Japanese music media franchise of the same name, standing for Dig Delight Direct Drive DJ, consisting of live performances, a rhythm game, a standalone episode, and more. The series, which began airing in 2020, currently has two seasons. This post will have spoilers.

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs and Wayback Machine. This was the twenty-first article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on January 30, 2023.

The plot of D4DJ's first season, also known as D4DJ First Mix, revolves around an idolish DJ unit at Yoba Academy which plays a mix of J-pop and dubstep. It is headed by Rinku Aimoto (voiced by Yuka Nishio), who returns to Japan after living on an unnamed African island. On her first day at the academy, She is inspired to create DJ unit with school DJ Maho Akashi (voiced by Maho Akashi), also known as DJ Mash, after seeing a performance by a hip hop unit named Peaky P-key. Easily excitable, her catchphrase ("happy around!") becomes the name of their DJ unit.

This music group later gains two additional members: a VJ and talented illustration named Muni Ohnaruto (voiced by Haruka Mimura) and wealthy-born Rei Togetsuwho who is skilled at playing the piano. Each person gets their role in the unit. Rinku becomes the main singer and dancer. Muni is the group's VJ, Maho is the group DJ, and Rei becomes composer and arranger of the group.

Like many anime with similar themes, music is front and center in the series. It informs the actions and dialogue of the characters, with the story almost built around the songs. In fact, the ending sequence of the season one episodes only focuses on Maho dancing and messing around at her DJ station.

This contrasts with other music series which aired last year, such as Shine Post, League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches, and the idolish Cue! Those series primarily focus on a single music group. D4DJ focuses on multiple groups at the same time. On the other hand, D4DJ is similar to the aforementioned series in that all of the characters in the series are female. Male characters briefly appear but are never part of the show's primary cast.

The show's additional units are just as talented as Happy Around! There's hip hop-themed Peaky P-key, sci-fi themed Photon Maiden, tropical-themed Merm4id, gothic rock-themed Rondo, lolita-themed Lyrical Lily, and gothic-themed Abyssmare. Each of these units has their own strengths and weaknesses. Even though they often compete with one another, they collaborate with one each especially when holding civic events.

While there isn't anything to write home about, when it comes to the show's plot, the songs each band performs are catchy and stick with you. The episodes have some similarities with many episodes of LoliRock, in the episodes often have a music video of sorts at the end. Despite this, the characters are given enough definition that you sympathize with their struggles.

What other series has two characters engaged in a rap battle (as shown above) about their feelings? There isn't one that comes to mind, making D4DJ unique in this regard. Even Disney series like Elena of Avalor, Hamster & Gretel, Milo Murphy's Law, Phineas & Ferb or Mira Royal Detective don't even come close.

The series has as much glitz as the recent seasons of Love Live! Superstar!! and Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, both of which have all-female casts. Even so, it is different, primarily because the animation style is more 3D, as much as DreamWorks productions using computer animation, like Guillermo del Toro's Tales of Arcadia trilogy series.

Personally, I tend to prefer 2D animation in currently airing Western animations like The Ghost and Molly McGee and The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, or the style of classic anime such as Sailor Moon and Dear Brother. Even so, I appreciate the more realistic and less "cartoony" styles in the recently concluded Undone and the 2018 film I Lost My Body, to give two examples.

As such, it took me some time to adapt to the animation style of D4DJ. However, the distinct character personalities made me more invested in the story and journey of these characters, as they try and make a name for themselves. This interconnects with the focus on music, creating songs, and the importance of having a fun time.

Unsurprisingly, behind all of the optimism and exuberance, especially of Rinku, is drama. For instance, in the show's first season, Rinku and Muni have a falling out, and almost drift apart, while Maho often overworks herself. As such, it shares some of the same anti-overwork themes manifested in series like as the well-regarded isekai I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level.

The often fast-paced nature of D4DJ makes it different from the easy-going nature of the slice-of-life musical comedy, K-On!, or the classic surreal comedy Azumanga Daioh. In some ways this is a positive, since it makes you feel the hyper for the show's songs just like the characters.

Rei counters this exuberance, since she can be a more reserved, yet talented piano player, partially because of strict expectations her parents hoisted upon her. Through the group, her character gets a chance to cast those rules aside and be as free as the optimistic Rinku, coming into her own as the show's first season progresses.

The second season, also known as D4DJ All Mix, changes up the story entirely. Instead of focusing on Happy Around!, it pivots to Lyrical Lily, DJ group whose members attend a well-regarded all-girls Catholic school named Arisugawa Academy. All the previous musical groups which have appeared in the series are pulled in, as Lyrical Lily enlists their help in an event to revitalize their town.

Unfortunately, these episodes do not pick up where the first season leaves off. In order to understand what is happening, viewers would need to play the video games of the franchise or watch the spin-off anime series, D4DJ Petit Mix. This confusion is compounded by the layout of the show on Crunchyroll, which treats the show's first and second seasons as separate shows.

This is remedied by the official D4DJ English YouTube channel, where viewers can watch music videos, OVA, a voice drama, or episodes of the show's seasons free-of-charge. The episodes air on Crunchyroll first and then are available on YouTube.

The series is similar to many female-centered idol anime for one major reason: it has yuri subtext. This is not unique. Shine Post, League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches, Cue!, and the two Love Live! series, which aired last year, all have similar subtext to varying degrees.

In fact, two of the members of the UniChØrd DJ unit, Kokoa Shinomiya and Hayate Tendо̄ , are in a canon romantic relationship, making them the first canon lesbian characters in the D4DJ franchise. Both attend Arisugawa Academy, like the members of Lyrical Lily, making it likely they will have a role in this anime.

Yuripedia has pages on six characters in the series, noting the closeness between Happy Around! members Rinku and Maho, Muni of Happy Around! getting jealous when Rinku gives attention to those other than herself, the habit of Noa Fukushima (VJ in Photon Maiden) to collect cute things and love "cute girls" (like Muni), and additional yuri subtext manifested by Aoi Miyake (a DJ in Rondo) and Haruna Kasuga (a member of Lyrical Lily). Such yuri subtext goes beyond these six characters.

The setting of the second season partially at an all-girls Catholic school hints at possible additional yuri themes. After all, the classic yuri, and Class S, series Maria Watches Over Us, known as Maria-sama ga Miteru and Marimite in Japan, is set at a fictional Catholic girls school named Lillian Girls' Academy in Musashino, Tokyo. The focus on Lyrical Lily in D4DJ is not all bad because viewers are shown some character depth, showing the closeness between these girls, and making them relatable.

The excitability of D4DJ's characters shines through in their voice acting. For instance, those who voiced the Lyrical Lily members are shown having a fun time in the above video. Some of the show's cast have provided voices to characters in music-themed series (BanG Dream! and Wake Up, Girls!) and shows in additional genres, such as Luck & Logic, Assault Lily, Komi Can't Communicate, Wandering Son, Non Non Biyori, and Do It Yourself!!

The character voices of the series are consistent from season-to-season apart from Kanon Shizaki, who voiced Rei in season 1, but departed the D4DJ franchise in 2022. She was replaced by Maiko Irie in the second season. The same was the case for Ami Maeshima, who voiced Ibuki Niijima until 2022, with Kanon Nanaki taking her place this year.

D4DJ is bolstered by Bushiroad, a Japanese company which created the franchise. It is known for the Revue Starlight, BanG Dream!, and Tantei Opera Milky Holmes franchises. While all three have spawned anime series, the first two of these franchises have yuri subtext in their anime, just like D4DJ.

The series is further reinforced by the animation studio, Sanzigen, which animated the series. Interestingly, the studio itself is partially owned by Bushiroad. This studio previously produced the BanG Dream! anime series, along with Sakura Wars the Animation, From Argonavis (spinoff from BanG Dream!), and many others.

The director of both D4DJ seasons, Seiji Mizushima, is accomplished. He even studied dance music, which is an important part of the show itself, as is portraying being a DJ as realistically as possible. Mizushima previously directed episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Beatless.

Otherwise, the group Photon Maiden may be a reflection of the actual Japanese idol industry, as it is formed by an entertainment company. All the units apart from them are formed by the groups themselves, rather than a company. In Japan, idols are marketed and commercialized through merchandise and endorsements from talent agencies, and deal with ravenous loyal fans.

This series, unlike the short-lived Heroines Run the Show, which ran last year, does not focus on the darkness of the idol industry. The latter has grueling work conditions, bans on dating, and oft serialization, especially for female idols. Often this is not a subject in idol anime either because the characters put together idol groups on their own or those involved in the industry (including voice actresses or the idol groups) are part of the anime series.

While D4DJ is not my favorite music anime, as I enjoy the Love Live! franchise better, especially Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, it is still entertaining and stands firmly on its own in more ways than one.

The first and second seasons of D4DJ are currently streaming on Crunchyroll. Both seasons are also available free-of-charge on the official English D4DJ YouTube channel.

© 2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

#d4dj first mix #d4dj #d4dj double mix #d4dj all mix #d4dj groovy mix #kyoko yamate #merm4id #rika seto #d4dj icons #d4dj layouts #neo d4dj #anime #djs #yuri #pop culture #reviews #lolirock #cue! #shine post #love live #azumanga daioh #k-on! #tales of arcadia #maria watches over us #class s #heroines run the show #Youtube

[textribe]

Difference Between Anime and Manga

Understanding the distinction between "anime" and "manga" is essential for fans and newcomers to Japanese entertainment. While both are integral parts of Japanese culture and have gained international popularity, they cater to different audiences and preferences through their unique formats and storytelling techniques. "Anime" refers to Japanese animated TV shows and movies, characterized by colorful graphics, vibrant characters, and fantastical themes. Manga," on the other hand, denotes Japanese comic books and graphic novels, known for their in-depth stories and intricate artwork. AspectAnimeMangaDefinitionJapanese animated TV shows and moviesJapanese comic books and graphic novelsMediumAnimationPrint (books, magazines) and digital formatsPresentationColorful visuals, motion, and soundBlack and white illustrations (mostly), silent (text dialogues)ConsumptionWatchingReadingOriginEarly 20th century (animation in Japan)Late 19th century (as a term, but modern form post-WWII) Difference Between “Anime” and “Manga” Definition of Anime Anime is a style of animation originating from Japan, featuring diverse art styles, colorful graphics, and themes ranging from action and romance to supernatural and science fiction. It is produced for all age groups and can be broadcast on television, distributed on media such as DVDs, or streamed online. Definition of Manga Manga refers to Japanese comic books and graphic novels that cover a wide range of genres and target demographics, including children, teenagers, and adults. Manga is primarily published in black and white due to time and cost constraints, though some full-color manga exists. Origin of Anime Anime evolved from early 20th-century Japanese animation, influenced by Western animation and culture. Its modern form developed in the 1960s with works by Osamu Tezuka and the broadcast of series like "Astro Boy." Origin of Manga The term "manga" was used in the late 19th century, but the medium as known today developed post-World War II. Osamu Tezuka, among others, played a significant role in shaping modern manga, which has roots in centuries-old Japanese art traditions. Pronunciation - Anime: /ˈæn.əˌmeɪ/ or /ˈɑː.nɪ.meɪ/ - Manga: /ˈmæŋ.ɡə/ or /ˈmɑːŋ.ɡə/ Comparing Anime and Manga Anime and manga, while closely related, cater to different sensory experiences: anime engages through visuals and sound, providing a dynamic representation of stories, whereas manga engages through static visuals and text, offering a more personal pace and imagination-led experience. The choice between anime and manga often depends on personal preference, availability, and the type of experience one seeks. Usage in Sentences with Explanations Use of Anime in Sentences - The latest anime series has captivated audiences with its intricate plot and animation. (Refers to a television series.) - Many anime are adaptations of popular manga, bringing static images to life. (Highlights the relationship between anime and manga.) - She prefers watching anime because of the voice acting and soundtrack. (Notes the auditory aspects unique to anime.) - Anime conventions are popular events where fans celebrate their favorite shows and characters. (Mentions the fan culture surrounding anime.) - The animation studio announced a new anime movie set to release next year. (Discusses the production of anime content.) Use of Manga in Sentences - He spends his evenings reading manga to unwind from the day. (Refers to the act of reading graphic novels.) - Manga artists often start their careers publishing stories in weekly magazines. (Notes the publishing process for manga.) - The library has a dedicated section for manga, appealing to various age groups. (Mentions manga's wide demographic appeal.) - Some manga are serialized for years, developing complex stories and characters. (Highlights the depth and longevity of manga series.) - Digital platforms have made manga more accessible to international readers. (Discusses the distribution and reach of manga.) Conclusion While anime and manga are closely interconnected, representing two of Japan's most influential cultural exports, they offer distinct experiences. Anime brings stories to life through animation and sound, appealing to those who enjoy visual and auditory storytelling. Manga, with its detailed artwork and deep narratives, caters to readers who appreciate the pace and depth that only reading can provide. Both forms, however, stand as pillars of storytelling, offering a vast array of genres and themes to explore. Commonly Asked Questions - Can a manga exist without an anime adaptation? - Yes, many manga exist without ever being adapted into anime. While popular manga often get anime adaptations, it's not a requirement for a manga's success. - Are all anime based on manga? - No, not all anime are based on manga. Some are original works, while others may be adaptations of novels, video games, or even original concepts created by the anime's production team. - How do I choose between watching an anime and reading its manga counterpart? - This choice depends on personal preference. Some may prefer the immersive experience of anime with its sound and motion, while others might enjoy the detailed storytelling and pacing control offered by manga. FAQ What is the difference between anime and manga? Anime refers to Japanese animation which can come in the form of TV series or movies, characterized by colorful graphics and diverse themes. Manga are Japanese comics or graphic novels with a wide range of genres and styles, typically printed in black-and-white. While both forms often share similar storylines, anime is an animated visual experience, whereas manga is read. What is Anime? Anime is a style of Japanese animation that appears in various formats like television series, films, and web series. Well-known for its vibrant art, fantastical themes, and emotive characters, anime has a distinctive aesthetic and storytelling approach that has garnered a global fanbase. What is Manga? Manga are Japanese comics or graphic novels, commonly serialized in magazines and later compiled into volumes. Manga is recognized for its distinctive art style and storytelling method, and it can encompass a broad spectrum of genres for different age groups and audiences. How has otaku culture contributed to the popularity of anime and manga? Otaku culture encompasses devoted fans of anime, manga, and other Japanese pop culture items. Otaku conventions, cosplay, fan-art, and fan-fiction have been instrumental in popularizing these mediums beyond Japan. This subculture has greatly influenced their global spread and visibility, leading to increasing recognition in Western mainstream media. What are the artistic and format differences between anime and manga? Artistic differences lie in anime's fluid motion and use of color, while manga is usually in black-and-white with a focus on strong linework and shading for depth. Format-wise, anime is consumed as episodes or films, involving motion and auditory elements, whereas manga is read page by page, allowing for a different storytelling pace and reader's imagination in scene interpretation. How do manga series become anime adaptations? Manga series become anime adaptations through a process of selection where popular or intriguing manga are chosen to be animated. This involves scripting, storyboarding, voice casting, and production by animation studios. Adaptations may follow the manga closely or diverge to suit the animated medium's storytelling style or production constraints. How have anime movies and manga books evolved in the West? Anime movies and manga books have seen significant growth in the West, gaining mainstream attention and widespread distribution. This has been propelled by the success of major releases, increasing fanbase through conventions, and the availability of anime on global streaming platforms. Localization efforts have made these media more accessible to Western audiences. What are the localization practices for anime and manga in American markets? Localization practices include translating text from Japanese to English, cultural adaptation to make content relatable to American audiences, and sometimes altering content to fit local standards and sensibilities. This process is critical for the commercial success of Japanese animation and comics in America and involves teams of translators, editors, and marketing professionals. What variety of anime merchandise is available for fans? A diverse range of anime merchandise is available for fans, which includes figurines, apparel, posters, DVDs/Blu-rays of series and movies, as well as cosplay costumes and accessories. Collectibles from popular series often become highly sought after, adding to the substantial economic footprint of anime fan culture. What kind of special editions and collector items are prevalent in the manga market? The manga market offers various special editions and collector items, such as limited-run prints, art books, box sets, and rare volumes with additional content like artist interviews or concept art. These editions often feature higher quality materials and unique cover art, making them appealing to collectors and fans alike. Read the full article

[tribow]

So I watched Blood: The Last Vampire

Why is it in english? This movie was mainly done in the english language. There's a few japanese lines, but vast majority of the time it's an english movie.

Was this meant to appeal to western audience? Maybe the film was just trying to be realistic as much of it takes place in America. Well either way, the english voice lines were....not great. However, it's also not the worst I've heard. It's hard to direct voice actors when you are unfamiliar with the culture behind that language. At least it wasn't clearly japanese voice actors playing english roles.

Enough about the english though, was the movie good? Yeah! The way the story is presented and the animation are both really cool! The animation being good was a give though. Production IG's staff were filled with banger animators in the 90s/2000s.

The story gets told with no introductions to anything that is going on and it still does it well. It's not easy to write a story that feels like you're starting in the middle of the plot without the narrative getting flimsy. Props for making it work here.

But.....it's not all good. Many of the characters are a bit weak. Their motivations aren't clear at all. This could very well be intentional, but it made it hard to get invested into any of the characters. Plus, the more you think about the story the more questions remain unanswered. It's a really unsatisfying film on reflection. There's a big lack of elaborating on world building here.

At least the animation and action are very good. This is a good watch, it's just so short.

K' so, I'm gonna discuss this movie's relation to the Blood+ anime series that are spoiler-y. If you don't want to know then don't keep reading.

I've seen some people talk about this movie so I was led to believe that Blood+ was a sequel of sorts to this movie. After seeing this movie though, I don't think that's necessarily true. A lot of what Blood+ establishes in its story would have some contradictions to the movie's Saya. Saya seems to be a more traditional vampire in the movie. She gets angry at Christianity for seemingly no reason in the movie until it gets revealed that she's a vampire. Yet in Blood+, there's no religious angle to it. I don't think Blood+ even mentions the word "vampire" when describing Saya.

I looked into this a bit and discovered that the directed had apparently planned for the Blood to be a three-part story. The rest of the story exist in the light novel adaptions of this movie, NOT, the Blood+ anime. I'm sure those light novels explain the full story. Blood+ is just its own version of the story.

Personally, I actually liked the Blood+ adaption better than the original, but that could very well be because of how complete that anime was. This movie is not a complete story by any means. I can't see the movie as better, but I can see how people would like a darker and grittier tone to the Blood story. Saya is a brooding and angry character in the movie. Much more proactive than the Blood+ Saya. She might be a more interesting character to follow overall, but the Blood+ Saya is such an emotional wreck as the series continues that even if she's less compelling than the movie, she still serves a strong role in her own story.

Well, I'm not willing to dive into all the Blood material just to find out more about the movie Saya, but I will be moving on to Blood-C to see how it holds up to the Blood stories that came before it.

#Blood: The Last Vampire #anime #review #Blood #this movie really could have used a longer run-time honestly #There's like....no internal conflicts or character crisis #just defeat the bad thing and its over #like that was cool but I wanna learn about the characters!!!

[zak-kondo]

As a child, I probably watched the English version of kiki's Delivery Service over 100 times. "Soaring" and "I'm Gonna Fly" are precious songs to me, to the extent I felt I'd tear up if I heard them again, and I did. I remember my mother would constantly quote Osono's lines about the pacifier. As odd as it may be to admit, Kiki is a childhood influence of mine; the first character in an anime I looked up to. She partly helped shape my personality as a child, and is a big reason why I talk the way I do to this day. As this child, I was completely changed by the world of Kiki's Delivery Service, and the purity of it's cast and personalities. Somewhere, my old VHS copy is still there, though I cannot play it anymore. Now, I got the chance to sit down and finally take a look at the original Japanese version of this after all these years. The differences were surprising to me.

Sitting down and watching this film again after all these years felt like sitting down during a reunion with an old friend. As much as I appreciate it, I was making fun of it also while watching it. I was treating this film more like a friend, as embarrassing as that sounds. Still, the differences are many, as I could not help but notice, considering that this film had been burned into my memory from all those years of watching it. The original is much more quieter. Maybe the Western attention span is that bad it needs more noise in dubs. The kids mention disco's, drink coffee, and at some point Kiki threatens her broom with death. Most surprising of all, is what the English version does with Jiji.

The music is elegant and invokes emotions in me. Maybe the main theme repeats too much in the songs, though I was and still am charmed by it. Listening to the bittersweet end of "On a Clear Day..." fills me with elegance and makes my mind dance. To me, that's Kiki's theme song. I close my eyes, as it reminds me of my childhood and takes me into the world of this film with imagination. Then I have to pinch myself and remind myself to stop taking cartoons so seriously.

Eventually, Kiki begins to lose confidence and direction in her life. Despite her and Tombo start to bond, she could not accept his friends because the one rich snobby one was among the group. Not only that, she was going through a depressive state; a sort of writers block, though with flying. All she needed was a reason to get her powers back, and she finds something out of misfortune that aids her in this way.

Because of my bias, I can't give this anything lower than a 10. I was too immersed and connected emotionally with it, and still am, that I can't go any lower. Still, all 10 out of 10's feel biased anyways.

This is an 80s work. This leads to a problem I have with so called anime viewers. Those that outright refuse to watch anything before, let's say, the year 2000. How misguided, ignorant, and stubborn can one be to ignore all anime before that?

If you don't watch anime before the year 2000, I can't take you seriously. Know your history. You can't understand the present without understanding the past. You'll be clueless and unprepared for the future of anime.

Some make up pathetic excuses that old anime is pretentious. When someone says an anime is pretentious, most of the time they probably didn't understand it, or tried to.

On another note, I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of an anime review. I've asked the people what they want to see in one. Surprisingly, I got a different answer each time. Some want to feel emotion, some want to be informed on the history of the production, some want something that can help them learn something intellectually or see something they missed. Others, simply put, just want to hear someone talk about anime. I found this very interesting. My approach to an anime review is to make it in my own style. Partly a self-autobiographical analysis in relation to the anime, and what it means to me on an emotional level. Sure, I am an amateur on a writing level, and I am constantly trying to improve my editing and sound as much of battle as it's been. This channel has been about growing also. I've crawled out of many hardships, and continue to find myself in new ones.

As for Kiki, leaving home at 13 to become a successful and independent witch feels a lot more dangerous, looking at it now again. This could easily have turned into a dark story, as the fortune teller witch said: a lot can go wrong. Kiki is essentially throwing herself out into the wild city life as a minor and practically homeless. The city she happens to find appears to never have had a witch. She gets crushed that she doesn't feel she belongs, and the thought of failure and starting over in a new city felt hard for her to accept. It's not for certain, though it's implied by Bertha that witches are unfamiliar and more like legends there. Considering that, it's not surprising how everyone is shocked or scared to see Kiki for the most part. Seen as an anomaly, and asking permission to stay by asking random people for some odd reason, she gets outcasted. It gets even more ridiculous. She almost causes a bloody multi-vehicle car accident, evades arrest on broom, and becomes a fugitive. Sitting alone eating a sandwich she took, with her cat, and little money, the situation felt hopeless. If not for Osono, what could have happened? She's not Yabuki Joe, who could probably adapt to a jungle if he had to, though that unsettling feeling of isolation and hopelessness felt harsh to watch.

Not only that, as someone who is not used to the city life, Kiki almost gets run over by a car, as she is not used to looking both ways. All she could do at the moment was window shop and wish about material possessions that seemed impossible for her to acquire, and feel frustrated by the stylish clothes of the street kids because she still had not accepted and embraced her weirdness. She meets a kid named Tombo that seemed as if he was an obsessed stalker that is into witches, though he actually means well. Kiki gets upset with him seeing as though she is very formal, and he isn't. Not only that, he was showing her off as something cool rather than human. After a few more frustrating interactions, she does decide to go to a party of his, despite that she was mad at him. Was she being nice? She was already talking about boyfriends, and looking out the window bored looking a bit envious of the couples passing by the bakery. Why not give him a chance? Regardless, Kiki going is also a good way to make friends since she had barely any at all at the time. Then there is Osono, pulling strings in the background for Tombo.

My only complaint is that there is very little closure in the end, despite there is an epilogue. I was left with a wide gap of emptiness from the lack of it. It doesn't feel like it reaches a meaningful conclusion. Not everything needs an answer, though you would think the climax of the film would lead to something more overtly intimate. Despite it all, this film will always stay with me and in my heart. It's become more than a part of my life, but a part of me.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Seven Black Heroines (Chu, 1982)

I'm a sucker for any movie that puts a bunch of cool characters together for a mission, and this is no exception. We get Brigitte Lin with an eyepatch. We get a tattooed Amazon who beats up a great big sumo wrestler for her introduction. We get a lady with a ridiculous hair metal coiffure who kills a man in a white suit when he accuses her of cheating at cards. (We never learn if she actually cheated. She seems cool so I'm inclined to take her side.) We get Sally Yeh as a mercenary proficient with explosives. (She's introduced on horseback, and I was tempted to refer to her as the "horse lady", but that might make this sound like Emanuelle in America, but this is mostly good clean fun for non-degenerates. There is however some dicey stuff involving animals, involving grenades going off way too close to horses, so I suppose I should warn viewers sensitive about such things accordingly.) There's a kleptomaniac and a prostitute who stabs her john...eh, these characters aren't that cool. And there's an alcoholic samurai. This character has the best introduction because her alcoholism is played initially for drama, but when the bar staff try to cut her off, she instead cuts them off...literally! (This character spends most of her scenes either drinking or looking for a bottle. And people say these movies don't care about character development.)

These characters end up in prison, although the movie sidesteps the usual sleazy pleasures of women-in-prison movies in favour of borderline comic relief wherein Lin repeatedly squeals on all the other characters to the prison staff and/or finds other ways to fuck them over. There's also a basketball scene where the characters play fast and loose with the concept of dribbling and one of them does a backflip to escape, only to be caught immediately. Eventually, Lin reveals her plan to break out and take out an enemy laboratory. At this point I should mention that this is set during World War II under Japanese occupation, but period integrity is not one of the movie's primary concerns. The other characters decide to ignore all the red flags raised by Lin in the first act and escape with her, at which point they become hunted down by a group of murderous black-clad riders, and the movie shifts from a WIP flick to a spaghetti western.

Along the way, there's a fun scene where the characters dodge boobytraps, and Lin reveals a snazzy fur hat that bears a strong resemblance to the hair metal lady's hairdo. (They stand back-to-back at one point so you can note the resemblance.) And there's a run-in with a group of villagers who challenge them to a swordfight, and eating contest (our heroines' representative cheats by tying her noodles to those of her challenger) and a drunken shooting match. There might even be ghosts. And there's an explosion-filled showdown with the riders and a shoot-'em-up climax when the characters infiltrate the laboratory.

This is directed by Chu Yen-Ping, responsible for the wildly entertaining Fantasy Mission Force. It shares with that movie a disregard for period detail and a cavalier approach to genre, although this doesn't cycle through quite as many, settling for just WIP, spaghetti western and WWII mission movie. (Fans of that movie will remember its WWII story involved Abraham Lincoln, Rocky, hopping vampires and Mad Max Nazis.) The movie is actually pretty astute about the iconography of the genres it navigates, particularly the western (there are plenty of great shots of the heroines and villains on horseback, and their confrontation is nice and dusty). It also has a secret weapon in the form of stolen Ennio Morricone music, which not only is a shortcut to production value but it actually deploys to rousing and even moving effect. By the time the movie reached its unexpectedly poignant conclusion, maybe it was the "L'estasi dell'oro" blaring on the soundtrack, but I admit I was a little touched. Am I getting soft? Maybe.

#film #movie review #chu yen-ping #seven black heroines #golden queens commando

[cartoonbabbles]

PEOPLE OF TUMBLR. I BEAR NEWS. HIGH GUARDIAN SPICE IS ACTUALLY KINDA GOOD? I have many thoughts and will probably tell none of them here. Just kidding. Here are some general brain bits from watching the first few episodes:

- Rosemary is someone I REALLY like as a protagonist, like her story has a sad past but she’s peppy and kind like Luz and Anne and Ruby kinda all rolled into one

- Sage is your “childhood best friend” character, but (like basically every character somehow) she’s quite fleshed out past the first couple episodes, and brings me joy

- Parsley is basically your bruiser character, but instead of buff and tall she’s buff and short. As ally short Yang with short hair. And she’s great. Funny, brash and really cool in general

- Thyme starts off as the “brooding and edgy idgaf but secretly I do” character and gets some pretty good mid season development. I like how blunt she is and how sick her roasts are

- another thing is that the show takes a couple episodes to find it’s footing, but really gets to develop the core cast as a result.

- I’ll go more into the production and my thoughts in a later post, but think of it kinda like RWBY v1. Get over the occasional visual error because HOLY FRICK THIS CHARACTER ANIMATION IS NOT BAD BY ANY MEANS

- like it’s a mid ground in terms of complexity between western simplified and Japanese overly complex, and I think the crew did a nice job on them

- basically, take your favorite tropes, like childhood best friends, sun and moon characters, that sorta stuff and put it in a blender. The show’s solid, and I like it for what it is. It’s like that cheese pizza you always get no matter what restaurant you go to, because there’s almost no way to mess it up.

- oh and also one at least (I haven’t gotten through the festival so I gotta check on that second character) trans character. They said it out loud. Voiced by series creator @dinoraye and super slick.

- I cannot get over how much this blew my expectations out of the water. Go watch high guardian spice you lovely bunch.

#high guardian spice #high guardian spice positivity #animation #rwby #owl house #amphibia

[aeternallis]

PDA in Inuyasha/Hanyou no Yashahime

I’ve noticed a lot of antis and shippers alike bringing up the fact that Sesshoumaru didn’t show much emotion nor acknowledgement towards Rin when he came to take Towa and Setsuna away.

Specifically, the scene shown below, so I thought I’d maybe shed some light on this decision from the production’s side, if no one has done it yet:

It goes without saying that unlike in western countries like the US where people are more open with their affection and whatnot, Japan is very much different. Even nowadays, it would be rare to catch a young couple kissing or hugging in public; at most, couples hold hands, but otherwise, PDA is usually restricted, let alone declarations of feelings. It’s why they’re always such spectacles in shounen and shoujo manga, because of how bold and out of the ordinary they are. 

This doesn’t mean that Japanese society is frigid or anything like that, not at all. It only means that affections in their society are more easily expressed in private and indirect ways. When I was studying abroad in Japan many years ago, my dorm neighbor (who was Japanese) would often hear me Skyping with my parents because of how thin the walls were. She’d told me once how she found it so touching that she would sometimes hear me say, “Love you mom and dad!” at the end of each call, and how sweet it was that I can openly show affection to them. 

Having said this, it’s not out of the ordinary for Sesshoumaru to have remained distant and cool when he was picking up his daughters, especially during this time period. It would have been out of character for him to have shown any sign of affection towards Rin, especially in front of three women he most likely considers as strangers, more Rin’s friends than any particular acquaintance of his. That, and coupled with the urgency of the situation, the lack of acknowledgement and display of affection is what was best and appropriate. 

Is the scene a bit awkward? Yes, but not nearly as big of a big deal as some of the shippers and antis make it out to be. XD 

Remember, Rin is acknowledged in the anime as Sesshoumaru’s bride and wife, the mother of his children. His show of affections are for her alone, for her eyes only, and it’s not something to be witnessed or be made a spectacle of. His pride and his dignity as a daiyoukai--let alone the social standards of the time--would never allow him to let strangers bear witness to what he considers personal and private with anyone but Rin. 

The inukag blog does an amazing job of showing Inukag’s most important moments in the manga, and even there, one can easily notice that the most intimate moments of this manga’s biggest canon ship is mostly conducted in private. So it’s not restricted to SessRin; every other canon ship in this series shares their most intimate moments in privacy. 

#hanyou no yashahime #hanyo no yashahime #sessrin #sesshoumaru x rin

[mbg159]

5 Things That 5Ds Fans Have Claimed Are True About 5Ds’s Production

Inspired by this wonderful post.

- Crow was supposed to be the main villain of the Dark Signer arc, with the smoking-gun evidence being a piece of very early concept art by Takahashi that describes him as a guy who’s tried to steal Yusei’s D-Wheel before and is now his friend, with Rex Godwin's massive Nazca condor shirt emblem being a cleverly-placed red herring.

- Crow was made into a good guy because his cards sold well, in that set that came out a month after he debuted and was shown as a good guy and Yusei's never-mentioned BFF. Rather than the standard anime production cycle of a few months per episode, they created the episode in negative three weeks, paying very close attention to the card game the same way they did when they swapped out Kaiser's Cyber Dragons for the incredibly meta-relevant Cyberdarks.

- Aki Izayoi's role was reduced because her voice actress, Ayumi Kinoshita, was pregnant at the time of the show's run in 2008-2011. She would go on to get married in 2012 and give birth to her first child in 2014, setting the world record for Longest Pregnancy.

- The Roma-Sophie cult scandal, which went public in September 2010, affected the production timeline of the entire second half of 5Ds, which began in mid-2009. Having seen the future, they decided to distance themselves from the cult, and cleverly destroyed the Arcadia Movement building and largely ended its plotline in December 2008. They also excised almost all elements of the occult and shifted the series in the direction of pure sci-fi. Except for that part of the series and the whole-ass DS game, because they figured they could have a little cult stuff. 

- The aforementioned cult also caused them to completely revert Carly Nagisa's long-running character arc, as her voice actress, Li-Mei Chiang, was a high-ranking member of Roma-Sophie. To accomplish this, they significantly downplayed her role in the series and turned her into a cheerleader for Jack Atlas. However, she was so nice around the office that they decided to raise her character from the dead, give her a prevalent, irritating running gag, and have her keep showing up and even get a filler recap episode that aired in October 2010, despite her having essentially no role in the ongoing plot and many other characters losing prominence or being written out in the transition to the WRGP Arc. They only recasted her part in that episode, which was near the end of the series, because she was literally under arrest at that point. It came as a complete shock to everyone, despite the fact that they had been planning for the eventuality for over a year.

These facts may have no apparent sources or citations except hoary decade-old internet rumors and fandom gossip one step above a friend’s dad who works at Nintendo, but they are definitely true. Because, as we all know, the idea of Yu-Gi-Oh shows downplaying or sidelining prominent female characters, reverting character development that might alter the status quo (especially when it comes to romance), rejecting cool occult elements that appeal to an older audience in favor of toyetic sci-fi that appeals to kids, and sticking the spotlight on completely unprecedented characters for no reason to the point of sidelining existing characters and plotlines, is utterly inconceivable. There has to be an outside explanation.

In seriousness, friends: sometimes a show just does things you don't want it to do. There's no reason for it. Nobody forced the writers to do it. There was no nasty executive sharpening a knife over their shoulder. The same writers who wrote the things you liked, can write the things you didn't like. This is especially true when you are a nostalgic twentysomething Western adult and the show is aimed at ten-year-old Japanese boys and therefore does things not meant to appeal to you in any way.

And I believed most of these myself at some point. I eagerly jumped on the idea. It let me construct a "true" version of 5Ds that existed in a mental covenant between me and the show's writers, who understood what was really good about the show. I could claim that, really, the last half wasn't bad, because it was just them doing the best with what they could under heavy limitations.

But there were no limitations. They wanted the show to be that way. They did it on purpose. It sucks, but it happens. Some people actually preferred the show that way, you know.

If it's any consolation, it's not new. Just ask a Dragon Ball fan about Gohan sometime.

#yugioh 5ds #aki izayoi #akiza izinski #carly nagisa #carly carmine #jack atlas #crow hogan #debunking