the blog project

[daynihongo-blog]

4/23/2019

This show was a fun one to watch. I think that whether or not someone has struggled with particularly gender crisis or trans identity, that this show has something that everyone can relate to. Mainly being that in this anime the characters are in middle school which is a prominent time where kids are searching for their early identity and struggling with identity problems, especially in a world that I feel is still pretty new to the idea of gender identity and wanting to explore your own gender identity. One example being in the first episode where his sister finds him dressed in her clothes and tells her friend that he is sick.

Overall I find this anime very interesting with a theme that I have never seen really explored and used before in a media like this (besides the obvious trap theme in anime, but that doesn’t ever dive into the reasons behind it).  I plan on watching the entire anime sometime this week so I can get the full experience of what looks like a very interesting anime that explores lesser talked about struggles.

[animishyo]

If you are interested in the delving into and learning more about the etymology of the term “trap” in the anime community, this video made by a Natalie Wynn, a trans woman (I showed a clip from another video of hers, “Tiffany Tumbles”, in class), is very informative (and entertaining and well produced)!  “‘Are Traps Gay?’ | Contrapoints,” Youtube video, 44:53. Published by “Contrapoints” on January 16, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbBzhqJK3bg

“A psychosexual journey to the heart of a bad meme.”

[animishyo]

Wandering Son (放浪息子 Hōrō Musuko)

[An early blog post on the off chance anyone would like to watch some supplementary material! Embedded videos at the end~]

Some notes:

I will be using feminine pronouns for Shuichi Nitori and masculine pronouns for Yoshino Takatsuki since they have been described as a trans girl and trans boy by the author, Takako Shimura (Wikipedia), and gender neutral pronouns for Chi based off my personal interpretation of Chi as nonbinary (a person who does not exclusively identify as a man or woman).

'Trans' is short for 'transgender', and both are adjectives. (e.g., "A transgender person", not "A transgender".

If you have any questions about terminology or things of the sort, please feel free to message me!

Okay, onto the blog post!

So, I actually have yet to watch this series in its entirety (though I likely will have by the end of this weekend), but I have wanted to watch the anime and read the manga (of which the anime is based on) for a while now. I’m ecstatic to have an excuse to prioritize watching AND to have the opportunity to analyze and discuss it with you all!

That being said, I picked out the episodes based on a video essay by ThePedanticRomantic on YouTube. It’s an hour long but well worth the investment, in my opinion! Link here, as well as at the end of this post with time codes for analyses on the episodes we watched [1].

I have a strong urge to make a super dense post filled with ALL the information, but then I fear I may never finish it. (I've already been working on the actual writing of this post for about an hour or so now and I have barely started the actual post... my time management is a big 'ole Yikes™.) SO! I will give myself a deadline of midnight (it's 11:35 pm right now), keep it short with some reflections, and save the rest for class discussion (for which I will hopefully be more organized this time around...).

I nominated this series for viewing in class because good trans representation is often difficult to find. Specific to the the context of Western anime culture, the term "trap" has often been used for characters that can be read as trans. (There are TWO video essays I recommend for this, [2] is ~44 minutes and the [3] is ~20 minutes, which I will include at the end. And hopefully I'll be able to show some clips in class!) There's also the fact that trans people face a disproportionate amount of violence. At least 26 trans people died of fatal violence in 2018 in the US. Already in 2019, two trans women have been killed, one as recently as March 30th, the eve of Transgender Day of Visibility. Representation matters, and is important for both the trans community and potential allies. (source)

I, myself a nonbinary person with a strong interest in trans and queer studies, have had trouble finding good queer representation in manga and anime finding that it often caters to a fetishistic gaze. Hourou Musuko, and Shimanami Tasogare are the only ones that immediately come to mind as good representation in manga an anime that I know of. (I've added Revolutionary Girl Utena and Yurikuma Arashi from Mawaru Penguindrum director Kunihiko Ikuhara to my watchlist now!)

I've heard from trans women that have watched this series that it had a big impact on them. Though the two primary characters, Shuichi Nitori and Yoshino Takatsuki have been described by the author as a trans girl and trans boy respectively, I was surprised to find the nuance in the discussions around gender. Particularly regarding gender expression and gender identity—performativism versus other theories of gender. (I've got two more videos for ya, a socratic debate )

Ahh, my head is spinning in circles trying to keep track of things but I want to get this posted so I’ll end it here. (For those keeping track, it is now 1:01 am. *sigh*) I can’t wait to read your posts and discuss!

Supplementary Viewing (if you are so inclined uwu):

[1] “Praxis What You Preach - A Full Retrospective of A Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko)," Youtube video, 1:00:08. Published by "ThePedanticRomantic" on December 27, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxQIn8wgiqg 

[time codes coming soon]

[2] “‘Are Traps Gay?’ | Contrapoints,” Youtube video, 44:53. Published by “Contrapoints” on January 16, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbBzhqJK3bg

“A psychosexual journey to the heart of a bad meme.”

[3] “’Traps’ Don’t Exist and Here’s Why,” Youtube video, 19:30. Published by “ThePedanticRomantic” on November 26, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeB2AXIG3E

[4] “The Aesthetic | Contrapoints,” Youtube video, 21:23. Published by “Contrapoints,” on September 19, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1afqR5QkDM

“What matters more—the way things are or the way things look?”

[5] “Transphobia: An Analysis | Philosophy Tube,” Youtube video, 23:33. Published by “Philosophy Tube” on October 12, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCxqdhZkxCo

“Ancient Greek Scepticism is back, and this time it’s personal.“

[tobe-gandamu]

The End of Penguindrum

           What is there that I can say about Penguindrum? I’m genuinely uncertain. These past few episodes certainly captivated me a lot more than the first few- though I suppose I resigned myself to the confusion of the series and just rolled with what came at me… That being said, there were quite a few really beautiful scenes (animation-wise) that really reminded me of Ghibli’s style, or even Your Name’s. Stylistically, very nice. Plot/message wise- I’m still a great bit confused.

           That isn’t to say that this is a bad show, in fact- I’m sure I would have really enjoyed it given the opportunity to watch it in its entirety. Sure, towards the beginning I found the characters and plot flat, confusing, and lacking all sorts of depth, but by the end of this I could see the faint whispers of the larger narrative, and some really cool moments (looking at you, burning journal scene) really showed off the depth and well… character, of these characters. Also the penguins were adorable as always. Good stuff overall.

          Couple of interesting notes here- the director/co-writer for the series apparently headed Sailor Moon R & S, as well as Revolutionary Girl Utena (design similarities abound).

AND WE’RE OFF TO THE PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLEX RACES!

[animishyo]

Your Evangelion screencap reminded me of this quote from this article I very much enjoyed reading: 

“If Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) was about how teenagers struggled to make sense of their existence in the 1990s, then Mawaru Penguindrum was about children living in the aftermath, or continuation, of the Lost Decade.“

[animishyo]

4.16.19 - Penguindrum Part 2

Watching those episodes was like being on that Alice in Wonderland spinning cups ride at Disney but in a different multiverse where the ride seems to be spinning dysfunctionally.

…But you come to find that it was actually performing quite logically. I say “logically” because this chart really sums it all up beautifully:

(Found on this blog. It doesn’t have the original source for the drawing, though,  [and a quick reverse google image search didn’t help me out] but it’s a great analysis! Along with these as well: )

Ikuhara just assaults you with imagery and metaphors, and questions of life, doesn’t he?

The apples as both a source of nourishment/love/life as well as a fruit of fate/chaos (from the stories of Night on the Galactic Railroad, Adam and Eve, and is there a story about an Apple of Chaos or is that just an episode of Billy and Mandy that got caught in the crossfire of my neural connections?)

The robot teddy bear doll things - they are definitely bombs or destructive weapons of some sort acting as a stand-in for the packages of sarin in the real-life attacks. They are also depicted as “two sides of the same coin” in that in the last timeline, with Ringo and Himari being the only ones directly in each others’ lives, the dolls on the bus seem to be just normal (perhaps popular since they’re so many? Or maybe they’re just mirror images of the Dolls of Destruction from the previous timeline… Maybe all of the above?)

The Scorpion Fire (from Galactic Railroad, if I remember correctly) represents the spirit of self sacrifice for the greater good (Momoka sacrificing herself to save those on the train, Himari sacrificing herself for Kanba, Ringo sacrificing herself for Himari [which, I noted here how sacrificing for one person vs sacrificing for multiple people are both treated with equal… weight? if that makes sense? “One is not more honorable than the other” kind of thing], Shōma sacrificing himself for Ringo).

The antithesis of this being Kanba’s willingness to sacrifice a bunch of strangers’ lives for Himari’s (and thus he fades into shards of glass because he has lost his soul, if you will), and Sanetoshi’s desire to sacrifice a bunch of lives in order to… save humanity..? Watch the world burn? A little of both?

There’s so much more I could go into but I want to at least post this before I lose myself in analysis and end up not getting a post in time again! I’ll leave it for class (and hopefully be able to decipher the passionate chaos that is my notes).

I leave you with some more screenshots I took (…and a glimpse at a project I did for another class…)

The lost children, the unchosen.

Sorry, Himari, your time has not. You will not become America’s Japan’s Next Top Penguindrum (in this timeline, anyway).

Ahhhh!!! Mirrors!! Fate!! Connection!!

That clock took me seven hours to model but it was worth it. I should add some apples in there...

[johns-anilog]

Post #20ish: The Wind Has Risen

Saving most of my analysis for tomorrow, so this post is just going to be my unadulterated emotional impressions. This film has gone back and forth between my first and second favorite Ghibli films for years now (between Princess Mononoke), and rewatching it has only cemented that. I saw this film back when it was in theaters here in 2014, and it resonated with me just as much both times, maybe even more now. This film tugs at my heartstrings masterfully, as it expertly delivers emotional highs and lows through its character writing, score, and choice of imagery. 

Seeing Jiro’s plane designs fail one after the other is tragic enough, let alone that the one that is successful is the Zero fighter that claimed so many lives, Japanese and others alike. His guilt is shown as he walks through the plane graveyard now populating his once pristine dreamscape, though this is resolved as he and Caproni watch the spirits of the pilots fly higher and higher into the clouds. Though, what really stirs my heart is the relationship between Jiro and Naoko. Though brief and fleeting, their relationship was hands down the emotional crux of the film. 

This film had an endearing cast all around, but for whatever reason I really like this German man. He feels especially wholesome to me. Perhaps it’s also his grey eyes and large nose I empathize with.

[animishyo]

It’s interesting that you consider the relationship the emotional crux of the film. Oddly enough, I was mildly affected by it, seeing it more as a distraction / unnecessary subplot. Of course, it was sad and all, but I don’t know, it just seemed so separate from everything else, like we were watching a spin-off movie being edited in to the main movie (I guess that’s kind of what a subplot is, huh?). 

I looked into it and found that the real Jiro, though he did have a wife (and two children, and an older brother, not a sister), she did not die of terburculosis. Maybe that’s why it felt rushed to me? It also felt like he had a completely different personality when he fell in love with Nahoko (which, I felt their relationship went from Just Friends to In Love super quickly). 

My sentiments were shared by a couple others I found online with a little google search (which made me feel a little better, in an oh, good, I’m not a heartless monster kind of way...). This article explained that the film was a combination of Jiro’s life (based on his biography, The Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter), and another story:

“The Wind Rises was actually a combination of two different creative works with the bonus of Miyazaki’s personal flare. In an interview on the Japanese TV Show “Oosama no Branch” of August last year, Miyazaki states the character of Naoko was lifted from the woman Setsuko in the Hori Tatsuo novel The Wind has Risen (1936-7). It follows the heroines experiences in a turberculosis sanitarium in Nagoya and the man who falls in love with her.” 

Maybe that’s why it felt odd, I feel like these two stories deserve a separate movie each. 

Anyways, this little delve into fact-checking Hirokoshi’s life, even if it didn’t necessarily change my opinion, did provide a little more Nuance™ to it.

[animishyo]

04.09.19 - The Wind Rises (2013)

I watched this movie not knowing anything about it other than that it’s a Miyazaki film. It was a long movie and since there wasn’t much action, it definitely felt long too. Once the film finished I felt a bit confused? And thus, I did like I do and looked it up on YouTube to see if there were any vide essays/analyses on it. There weren’t too many and they were pretty short as far as video essay standards go (at least from what I typically watch). I did get the most important historical context from them though: that Jiro Hirokoshi was real person.

Jiro Hirokoshi was a Japanese engineer who worked on designs for many aircrafts used in WWII, including the one used in the Pearl Harbor attack and the planes used in kamikaze attacks.

Oooooh! Everything made so much more sense after that. (Imagine that.)

With this historical context, I can appreciate the film much more. The juxtaposition of this quiet and passionate designer, who seemingly isn’t concerned much with the fact that these are war planes to be used and is just thrilled he has an opportunity to design beautiful planes, is a bit eerie. How could such lethal machines be created from such (arguably) innocent passion?

I think this kind of question is also applicable to the world of technology today (e.g. security concerns with Facebook, Google, etc., Amazon’s domination of the retail industry, etc). These developments typically came about from passion projects. It’s not a 1:1 comparison (since the creators weren’t employed and ask to make these things, nor were they intentionally created to be malicious), but it’s something that crossed my mind.

[tobe-gandamu]

Barefoot Gen & The Atom Bomb

           I could end it there, to be honest, as that song sums up my views post watching movies such as these.

           I genuinely have mixed feelings on these two films, surprising as I sincerely felt bereft of emotion after watching the both of them, though I did callous myself before going into either with the mentality that the likelihood of any character surviving was very, very, slim.

           In that case, Barefoot Gen upset me, more than it should have, for sure. The creators certainly took some liberties when adapting the horrifying truth into film, namely by not making it horrifying enough. Gen’s survival truly made me upset, not just by surviving being vaporized, but especially after contracting acute radiation poisoning. Other incongruities include the “ghost” figures he sees immediately after the bomb, as well as that hauntingly graphic scene where only choice parts of people are incinerated. Sure- the scenes are haunting, and they accomplish that task well enough, but the reality is that people close enough to the epicenter (close enough to have their eyeballs boil out of their skulls) would have been vaporized. Think Thanos snap turned-to-dust levels, except in a singular instant, every living thing in a 370m (1200ft) radius of ground zero, where the population density is roughly equivalent to Brooklyn. One famous victim sat just 270m from ground zero on stone steps, his shadow being permanently burned into the steps and wall behind him as the area around where he was sitting was bleached white by the immense heat.

           Make no mistake, this event is one of the greatest tragedies to ever befall mankind, but it is through media such as Barefoot Gen that people remember it. As I’ve said before, my reasoning for studying the second world war, in particular, is as a sort of memento to all those who lost their lives in the conflict. From what I have gathered thus far, there really isn’t much that mass-market media such as movies can do to accomplish this same goal, as there is no objective truth behind a lot of what happened back then. A lot of important things are steeped in propaganda and misconstrued truths, logical fallacies, and literary clichés. In a sense, however, I feel that that is for the best. If Barefoot Gen, for example, had gone the exact route of history, I doubt it would have been so well received. As the cliché goes, people need hope, they need some sort of positive resolution or bright future to look forward to. Grave of the Fireflies accomplishes my view moreso, but as I’m discussion leader tomorrow for that film, I’ll elaborate more on my points then.

           The truth of the matter is, while people may seek a positive resolution, etc, from interpretations of past horrors, reality, in this sense, is often disappointing.

Added bonus- What would happen if Little Boy (Hiroshima bomb) was dropped on the Reitz Union. If the image is too small, I will explain tomorrow in class.

[animishyo]

So, I read up a bit on Barefoot Gen earlier today and then looked into the author. I had no prior knowledge of the effects of the bomb itself or of the radiation from it, but I did remember reading that the manga was based on the author’s real life experience. I wanted to look into it a bit more after reading your post to see how loosely. 

I found this interview with the author which I was initially going to skim but ended up reading most of it. I’m gonna quote some of your post and follow it up with some quotes from the interview of the author describing his experience.

Indented quotes are from: Keiji Nakazawa Interview in The Comics Journal #256 (October 2003). Link: http://www.tcj.com/keiji-nakazawa-interview/

“Gen’s survival truly made me upset, not just by surviving being vaporized, but especially after contracting acute radiation poisoning.“

“I was standing right in front of the [school] gate, and the lady was standing about a meter in front of me.  . . . Then, just at that moment, there was a huge flash. It seemed to rush at me. I remember the center was pure white, with blue-white around it and orange-red around that. I saw that flash for an instant, and after that I don’t remember anything.

The next thing I remember, it was pitch dark. It seemed like night. But a moment ago, there had been blue sky overhead. I felt something jabbed in my cheek, a nail — I still have the scar, see? I wondered what had happened. . . . I saw the lady I’d just been talking to, but now she was lying out in the street. Her hair was all burned, her face and skin were black, and she was staring straight at me.“

“Other incongruities include the “ghost” figures he sees immediately after the bomb, . . .” 

“There were throngs of people walking silently along, like a parade of ghosts. Their skin was all in strips. The heat from the A-bomb reaches around 5,000 or 6,000 degrees, you know; it melts the skin right off you in an instant. But human skin is pretty amazing stuff. It strips right off you all the way down to your fingernails, and just hangs there. So people were walking along with their hands out in front of them, the skin from their arms dragging on the ground. Just like a bunch of ghosts.“

“. . . as well as that hauntingly graphic scene where only choice parts of people are incinerated.”

“Another thing I noticed was that people wearing white clothing had those clothes on intact. But the rest of them was completely burned. Later I learned that the heat of the blast behaved like light hitting a mirror. It reflected off white clothes but was absorbed by dark clothes. Unfortunately, most people at this point in the war were in the habit of wearing dark clothes so they wouldn’t be visible to enemy planes at night.“

“. . . but the reality is that people close enough to the epicenter (close enough to have their eyeballs boil out of their skulls) would have been vaporized. “

“When the blast from the bomb hit people in the face, their eyeballs would pop out and dangle from their sockets. So people were staggering along supporting their eyeballs in their hands.”

Ore wa Mita (I Saw It) is supposedly an autobiography by Nakazawa and I definitely want to read it. The page that had the interview had some pages from it. Even those standalone pages hurt to read. Sometimes reality is stranger (and more cruel) than fiction.

[animishyo]

Grave of the Fireflies (1988) & Barefoot Gen (1983) [04.03.19]

I had seen Grave of the Fireflies before when the Hippodrome played it a while back. I went into it blind thinking things like "Ooh, yay~ anime movie with my friends!" Boy, did it slap me in the face. I didn't think an animated movie could give me so many feels. Every time I felt sad, I would remember that this actually happened and The Sad would multiply. It's been a while since I've watched it and I'm hesitant to watch it again, but I read up on it a bit. I found out the director, Isao Takahata (who passed away almost exactly a year ago, April 5, 2018), had survived an air raid in his hometown!

The author of the original Barefoot Gen manga, Keiji Nakzawa, also had personal experience with atrocities of the war. He was born in Hiroshima and was there when the atomic bomb hit and the manga is loosely based on his experience. He also wrote wrote another manga before Barefoot Gen called Ore wa Mita (the English translation is I Saw It) which Wikipedia described as being autobiographical.

Knowing that information now, after having watched the film, I'm convinced the only way one can portray emotion that deeply is if they've felt it themselves. I don't think I've ever cried as much or as hard for a film, any film, as I did watching Barefoot Gen. It tore my heart open but then would promptly put a bandaid on it via Gen's optimism. I'm fairly sure that I would go from bawling to chuckling at least once every 30 min. It's definitely become one of my favorites (though I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to watch it again any time soon), and one of those movies that I think everyone should watch at least once.

War movies from a child's point of view give a unique perspective to things we become more and more numb to as we grow older. In that sense, Barefoot Gen reminded me of Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a Spanish film about the Spanish civil war also written from a child's point of view. They are very different in most other ways, (Gen is more explicit and realstic in its depictions, whereas Beehive is more detached from the war but still conscious of its presence) but I really appreciate the way they both approach the depiction of war in film.

The whole of Barefoot Gen was beautifully animated but I especially appreciated the artistic decision to depict the bombing itself in bright, odd, but complementary colors. It captures how surreal the whole thing was and still is.

[animishyo]

3.19.19

I'm saddened that it took until this class for me to pick up some Tezuka. His social commentary and  humanist philosophy coupled with his drawing style, his organization of panels, and use of film techniques just makes the perfect cocktail of a good manga. Pheonix, his life's work, had some of the funniest as well as some of the most horrifying images I've seen. The kind of comedic techniques he employs, like the jokes and the breaking of the fourth wall (and panel "walls"), pairs especially well with his drawing style, much more, in my opinion at least, than more "realistic" manga styles. The visuals of his work are so cartoony and detached from reality, yet the feeling and drama from the narratives are so real.

On the subject of "real", I really enjoyed how he depicted characters from the Kojiki as normal people. Within the context of the times he grew up in, I'd venture to say it's also bold and rebellious. Even more fabulous is the very medium he used to "debunk" the Kojiki and the origins of the Imperial family that it explains. The accessibility of manga as a medium and of Tezuka's art style in particular, makes this easily digested by the average reader.

These were some of my favorite little ~jokes~:

[krupptonaru-blog]

Uneasy Warriors/Gate

When I first was reading about prince pickles I was imagining an actual pickle, Veggie Tales style. I’m kind of disappointed that’s not what it turned out to be, but wha’cha gonna do? I thought the paper (Uneasy Warriors) was an interesting read. I feel like when you go to Japan you do see a lot of posters where the main selling point is the pretty girl, but the JSDF really kicks it up a notch. The poster that was used in the paper (p. 127) is so vague, if you cut off the 自衛官募集 at the very bottom you’d probably think it was an ad for a singer or something. The gender component of the paper was also interesting. Always pairing happy women with the idea of peace to create a certain image in the mind of the reader is something that’s probably subtle enough to evade my notice completely. She also made a note about how the manga suggested what it is to be a man (i.e. you were/are in the military), but when I read that it made me wonder what the typical idea of masculinity is in Japan. Finally, isn’t it interesting to read about how hard the JSDF tries to avoid aggressive wording in their recruitment posters after reading Gōmanism where he complains about how peace loving the Japanese have become?

Do it for the dōjinshi

Part of me says to let that be my only comment on the show, but I just can’t commit. Anyway, I read the other paper first, and as I was watching just the first episode a sentence from the paper came to mind. “Collectively, the images that dominate public relations materials suggest that the Self-Defense Forces are necessary for everybody’s safety and security; that their members are ordinary men and women capable of extraordinary acts; that they are powerful but carefully trained and contained; and that they can militarily defend Japan if they absolutely must” (p. 119). Necessary? Check, that other army was chopping Ginza up good. Ordinary wo/men capable of extraordinary acts? Well, if you consider otaku to be ordinary, then check. Powerful but carefully trained and contained? Well we don’t see their training per se, but they did shoot a dragon down so we can at least say they’re powerful. Can militarily defend Japan? Check, it’s revealed in episode 2 that the attacking kingdom lost 60% of their army (and Japan obviously lost a bit less than that). It’s funny to think that if that was our checklist we arguably would’ve hit all of them. And it only gets more apparent in later episodes when they’re just decimating people. Moving on, it was funny that to get around the fact that the JSDF can’t invade they just declared everything on the other side of the gate to be Japan. And then they maintain the moral high ground with A.) the king being a dick and B.) they’re job is to protect the people (and such). 

[animishyo]

I, too, thought of Veggie Tales almost immediately when I got to the part about Prince Pickles!! It was interesting to note because I grew up on Veggie Tales (and have fond memories of such classics as “Love My Lips,” and “The Hairbrush Song”) but didn’t realize until years later that it conveyed moral themes based on Christian culture. It feels more innocent than the SFD PR efforts, but then again, is anything truly that innocent when its target demographic is The Youth™? 

The typical idea of masculinity in Japan is also something I wonder about. I’ve read and watched some things that suggest (or just overtly say) that Japan purposely infantilized and emasculated its image of masculinity following the war and the atrocities committed, perhaps to be viewed more sympathetically. I’m recalling this off the top of my head, though, and don’t have any sources on hand, so it should certainly be taken with a large grain of salt, but I was really intrigued by that theory (if we can called it that). Speaking abstractly and with a limited knowledge of international politics, I felt a disconnect between how Japan portrays itself outwardly versus inwardly. 

[animishyo]

03.15.19

So I watched Gate before doing the reading and my view of it changed a bit after reading Uneasy Warriors. Watching Gate without the reading seemed like just another anime trying to appeal to the Otaku demographic while mixing military, fantasy, perhaps some folklore (shinigami?). The plot was a little jolting because the switch from otaku bro going to a convention to otaku bro stabbing a guy that was dressed like he came from the past happened so quickly. I didn’t know anything about this anime going in so from the first couple scenes I thought it was a slice of life anime focused on an otaku.

Now, after I read Uneasy Warriors, I saw a lot of similarities between the Prince Pickles story and Gate. And then it seemed a lot like a PR effort to create a positive view of the self defense force within the otaku demographic. They were helping these helpless people that were being targeted and even providing some of them with refuge. It also gave off the image that even if you don’t like leading and doing military-esque things, maybe you just have a natural talent for it! You don’t have to be passionate about it to do it.

And maybe you’ll find fellow otakus among your peers.

Anyways, the reading was all kinds of fascinating. The Prince Pickles story felt like some next-level SFD infiltration into popular culture. Frûstûk used the word “manipulate” a lot, and I agree with the use of it. Things like “posters on which cute little dogs bark, ‘I love peace!’”, women being overrepresented and promoted as the peaceful gender in PR posters, the widespread use of cute mascots which promote a sympathetic response. That last one reminded me of how in the the mascots for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics are also very cute and have a masculine and feminine one.

I wanted to include this image featured in the reading because the look of it really appealed to me. The person almost entirely buried in the ground and  drawn in a kind of Gorlliaz style, the middle finger, the angry but slightly confused expression, the snail on the helmet, the peace and love button next to the cancel one, everything is just great. I wish she had gone more into it

Also, I was SHOOK when I read that Morning Musume had also been in a PR poster! I mean, I guess the middle schooler in me who innocently consume idol media without knowledge of the industry was shook. The me of today was moreso disappointed but not surprised... Still, my childhood :( 

And finally, this is not an analysis or comment on the texts for today but just a little funny thing: my friend passed by my room while I was watching Gate and asked if this class was military-focused because every anime they had seen me watching was related to war in some way, haha. But I mean, the war had a big impact y’know!! How could popular media not reflect that?

[johns-anilog]

Post 14: The Worst Thing Since Marmalade Boy

The title’s mostly just joking around, but my, what an absolute treat this reading was. And by treat, I mean portion of data so worthlessly repugnant it makes me sick to my stomach. I wouldn’t even give this enough credit to call it a “piece” of anything other than hot garbage. At the superficial level, all of Kobayashi’s characters are obnoxious, crass, and fail to under even a single meaningful word of dialogue from their hideous faces (not exactly a fan of his “art”, its ugly over-exaggeration does go hand in hand with the rest of this, however). And when he switches from his very very subtle allegory to his real message, it comes across as heavy-handed and ham-fisted as it could possibly be. Steeped in his supposed intellectualism and freedom from “brainwashing” (or as Alex Jones, an infamous conspiracy theorist and Sandy Hook denier, would put it, social conditioning), he fails to see how deluded his nationalistic views are without a shred of self-awareness or irony.

This is at the same level of conspiracy theorizing that Holocaust deniers are, to the point where the issue of numbers is often a contested issue brought up by deniers of both Nanking and the Holocaust. Or how about his blatant justification for comfort women and how the military held no responsibility for their circumstances at all, when many where not just native Japanese, but women from Japan’s colonial territories as well (not to mention the not-so-subtle jab at women making baseless accusations of rape). I’m all for freedom of speech and expression, but things such as this are best left to rot in cesspools and echo chambers of hate speech that have no hope of escaping and causing any real harm.

This post gets no poem, as any I could not and will not muster any ounce of creativity inspired by this repugnant work of filth.

[animishyo]

I appreciate your wrath and your lack of a poem in protest! And I’m also glad I’m not the only one who drew connections to Alex Jones, haha. 

As much as I long for the world in which these ideas die in their echo chambers, they very often sway and attract those who are vulnerable. At first the idea seems ridiculous, and is even portrayed that way, such as Kobayashi’s manga. But since it’s entertaining, readers keep coming back, perhaps at first just for fun, but the repetition can start to indoctrinate one into that way of thinking, and thus we get Neo-Nazis and Flat Earthers. 

hbomberguy’s video on Flat Earth analyzes how something like Flat Earth become a Thing. It’s long but very entertaining! 10/10 do recommend uwu

[animishyo]

03.12.19

Wow, this was a lot.

The article was a little difficult for me to follow (but that could be because I read it at 3 am…), but once I sort of got the hang of reading it, the phenomena that were being described felt eerily similar to the American politics today… Fujioka reminds me of right-wing public intellectuals and Kobayashi reminds me of… The Alex Jones Show?

It was a little frightening how rational they could sound sometimes though. I found myself having to reread quotes of Fujioka’s and then still not really understand what I was supposed to catch until I kept reading the article. Kobayashi was a bit more out there though. He reminded me of Alex Jones because of how he portrayed himself so eccentrically, almost creepy sometimes, like he was playing up this conspiracy theorist character.

I mean... he even has the creepy glasses look panel...

I guess it did make it more entertaining though. But it also let him get away with ending arguments by saying something along the lines of “that’s a ridiculous argument! case closed!” and it was a bit annoying.

Most of Kobayashi’s arguments for revision come down to him having an essentialist view. He’s so paranoid about his nation being “misrepresented” and kids growing up hating being Japanese. I think the same was true of Fujioka if I remember correctly. That strong attachment of nationality to identity is chilling.

[tobe-gandamu]

Zipang

This anime, man… I really do have some mixed feelings about it. To get the main stuff out of the way- yes, I loooved the WWII setting, and despite coming into this blind, I was hopeful and excited of this occurring as soon as I saw the Imperial Japanese officer’s uniform in the opening. I may be a bit of a nerd, but since the Pacific Theater is truly where my interest in the war lies, I relished the opportunity to pick out ship classes, understand passing references, and gawk at the beautifully rendered historical events unfolding in front of me. I. Loved. This. Show.

For the action, that is. The story/logic is where things somewhat fell flat for me. Sure, I can get over the fact that the time warp is never explained, or that they never return to their own time- it’s cool, I can get over that. What I’m not particularly keen on was the Mirai’s crew’s entirely universal agreement that the Empire of Japan was the “right side” to go with. Sure, the Allied forces fired at Mirai, sure, they were Japanese people, but they acknowledged several times how terrible and brutal the military regime was but turned the other way because fellow soldiers were dying. I may be incredibly biased, as sure, given the chance I would have sided with my countrymen in that scenario, but they throw around the “2 million dead Japanese soldiers” number without so much as a mention of the 5-20 million civilian lives taken by the Empire.

I digress. The historical accuracies in this show are hit-or-miss, from the fictional missile cruiser itself, to its armaments, survivability, etc, to the very real WWII planes, formations, vessels, and individuals. Overall the show was a treat, though as I looked back on what I saw, I suppose I just got a bit salty over a clash of ideologies. The peacetime vs wartime mentality issue is something that is very rarely explored, and I really enjoyed how it was portrayed here. Also the animation, just really good stuff.

[animishyo]

I’m not very well versed in history and had a bit of trouble following what was going on and who was on what side, but I thought Mirai’s crew didn’t necessarily side with the Empire of Japan, but rather that the Prime Minister persuaded them to just let things play out the way history said it goes (history? future? time is confusing).

I do see the criticism that can arise from just letting things happen though. Knowing that millions of people are going to die and your knowledge of the events that will occur could potentially change the course of history... it’s like the “would you kill baby Hitler?” kind of question. 

How does one know if an alternate future is better or not? I think the question of “What would Japan be like if the bombs were never dropped?” is a question that no one really wants to think about. Would Japan have fought to the end? Would more people have died? Is it even worth thinking about? It feels, I don’t even know the word... Inappropriate? Cruel? to consider that millions of lives could have been spared.

Anyways, I think I’m going off course (is that a ship pun?) and rambling now. I hope what I wrote at least makes some sense!

(Also I forgot to include it in my post, but I thought it was funny that Mirai was the name of the ship since mirai means “the distant future” or “the world to come”, gave me an internal giggle every time.)

[animishyo]

02.28.19

Zipang was wild. It was a bit confusing for me, I’m sure partly due to only watching a few episodes of it. But Kusaka… I could never pin him down… I feel like he went from an Imperialist, to being an ally to the modern Japanese on the Mirai, and then became… a nationalist fanatic? Like he was fighting for Japan but then he realized that Japan still existed in the future because they surrendered, which made him think badly of Japan (that they’re weak, cowards, etc., for surrendering), so he decided he wanted to create a new country, a new Japan: Zipang.

It felt like the Mirai was modern Japan looking back and truly realizing what Imperial Japan was like, during the war especially. Their ruthlessness in war, and that war mindset. Kusaka specifically said to Kodamatsu at one point that he admired Kodamatsu’s morality, but that said that it wasn’t applicable during wartime.

On the visual side, the 2.5D stuff was really cool!! I love when anime can pull that off and it not look weird (I think it’s usually when they do it with humans that it looks kinda weird, with machinery it looks heckin cool). Also the animation was suuuuper smooth which was really refreshing (especially compared to Macross, sorry Macross). The animation also portrayed emotion very very well. I could feel it!!

Anyways, looking forward to getting some clarity in tomorrow’s class!

[animishyo]

hello friends, I found this on the Tube of You and have found it to be a very nice summary of a great portion of our lectures. I played it kind f podcast style, turning to look every now and then when they click to the next slide while doing some chores, it was very Good. 10/10, do recommend.

[krupptonaru-blog]

Sailor Moon

This is me everyday once I get home

For a second I thought this manga was way darker than it is. Anyway, I had never watched Sailor Moon before. I had heard about it, how could you not, but had never taken the initiative to watch it on my own. As I was reading it I was struck by how Usagi was either feminine (e.g she describes herself as being delicate) or other people say she should be more feminine (e.g. her friend tells her she shouldn’t be so gluttonous). And all of the heroines are pretty. I even made a note about female representation while I was reading (with Usagi copying sailor v before she became sailor moon). 

So, when I began reading the followup texts and they were pieces on representation I wasn’t like, “Nooo, what? This is crazy”. But, with that being said, I did feel some amount of resistance to the way those papers portrayed things. I’ll start off with Beautiful Fighting Girls, because I hate it :). I’m willing to admit any possible misunderstandings on my part, if somebody wants to point them out. I think this text gets to me more, the more that I read it. The first time I read it, it took me a couple of pages to find something that bothered me. As I’m rereading it now, it only takes a few sentences. It’s when he lists off several examples of ‘beautiful fighters’ that have no equal in this world, and that it’s a form of expression unique to Japan. Except then a few pages later he says there are some exceptions and that he wants to say the beautiful fighting girl is not originally nor uniquely Japanese. I feel like the basework for his argument isn’t sound to begin with. Then he goes on to classify the vast majority of (presumably fighting) girls/women of EU/NA as having butch personalities with lots of muscle. Uh… what? Just as he claims that there are conspicuously few fighting girls, I notice that there are conspicuously few examples when referring to things outside of Japan. I’d be interested to see examples of what he thinks exemplifies a butch personality. Moving on, I’m pretty sure he mentions the virginity of sailor moon because he wanted to reinforce his point about otakus seeing these character as “objects of sexuality” but still… gross. And then I suppose the cherry on top of it all is that he puts a weenie on the girls. Why’s it always gotta be weenies with psychoanalysis? (Thanks Freud) Moreover I don’t understand why he felt the need to transform the “Japanese-style” women into phallic women. If the phallic woman is supposed to symbolize omnipotence/perfection or just be a symbol for a powerful woman, in what sense do the Western ‘butch’ women not fit this? Note: I don’t ask this because I want the author to recognize the United States of Butch as equally phallic women, rather I ask because I find the whole thing preposterous. I would complain about the second paper here, but there are many points where I can see their point. There are also a few points where I’m fuzzy on the author’s point, and I don’t want to criticize something when I know I don’t fully understand it. 

So, with all of that out of the way, a small blurb about the OLs. When I lived in Japan I would go to this ramen place near the dorms all the time, it was my favorite place. Despite the fact that I went so often, I’m so bad at eating noodles. I would have to eat slowly or I would splash little bits of broth all around. I always felt bad so I would clean up my spot when I finished. 懐かしい感じなぁ。I thought the manga was really funny. I would’ve been happy to read a bunch of these. 

[animishyo]

I also didn’t particularly like the first reading, but I was also constantly confused about where the author stood? Granted, I only read it once. I felt like the author was starting to lean towards an “essence” kind of argument until I read these parts:

And then after that, I felt confused... 

That part about virginity was a little ick  though, I agree.

It almost feels like fetishization, but I can see kind of where they’re coming from? When I try to think of what Western teen girl hero characters there are, particularly ones aimed at young teens, none really come to mind. Granted, I may not really have much the exposure required to say such a statement. Maybe when we delve into other (non-visual novels / comics) media, maybe there’s something there, like maybe in a Disney or Pixar movie. Those seem to mesh better with Western audiences maybe, since (from my personal experience) the audience for feature kid’s films is a lot bigger than that for comics. I’m not really sure if I had a point or went anywhere with it, but I’m interested in hearing more of people’s thoughts in class!