cry havoc

Oh, wait, I do, it's because I think we've entered something like year nine of correspondence, so it's probably safe to say that branchandroot's influence on me is beyond dire, at this point. Hence watching the first 30-or-so episodes of GetBackers. Right. I know. Like a decade behind everyone else, but I guess Em can wear down even the most stubborn of dogs.

Currently it's on pause, while I watch Fate/Zero and then realize that maybe watching Fate/Stay_Night might help, which I'll probably fast-forward through all but the fight scenes, and only that so I can watch the OVA. And even then, only that because OVAs (usually) have higher budgets and therefore better fight scenes. And then I'll get back to the other, or maybe by then I'll just break down and read the manga.

kifed from taithe:

1. List 10 or more fandom/series you're into
2. Your f-list will guess who's your fav. character(s) in each series

A hint: in any given story, there's a 66% chance my favorite will be a secondary character.

1. tengen toppen gurren lagann - Viral
   
2. spirited away - Haku
   
3. mononoke - Kusuri-uri
   
4. darker than black - Hei
   
5. mushishi - the collector-doctor
   
6. ookiku furikabutte - Azusa Hanai
   
7. gundam wing - Heero
   
8. natsume yuujinchou - Tanuma
   
9. seirei no moribito - Balsa
   
10. avatar the last airbender - Toph
    
11. nurarihyon no mago - Grandpa
    
12. fullmetal alchemist - Gen. Olivia Mira Armstrong
    
13. kuroshitsuji - the Undertaker
    
14. naruto - Neji
    
15. kimi ni todoke - Chizuru Yoshida
    
16. loveless - Natsuo/Youji (yes, I know, tie)
    
17. twelve kingdoms - Enki
    
18. no.6 - Nezumi
    
19. tactics - Kantarou Ichinomiya
    
20. gundam 00 - Haro

...and purely as a bonus for those rare few of you who also watch k-dramas, j-dramas, c-dramas, or tw-dramas but not anime:

1. material queen (tw) - ChuMan
   
2. my girlfriend is a gumiho (k) - MIHO!
   
3. nobuta wa produce (j) - AKIRA SHOCK
   
4. keizoku spec (j) - Toooooooooooda.
   
5. black & white (tw) - Lan Xi Ying
   
6. hong gil dong (k) - Hong Gil Dong
   
7. bloody monday (j) - Otoya Kujō
   
8. dalja's spring (k) - Wee Seon-joo
   
9. sungkyunkwan scandal (k) - Gu Yong Ha
   
10. boss (j) - BOSS. Of course.

I have seen the HD trailer for the new Avatar series (here).

The icon says it all.

(If you're not familiar, "shounen" means "boy", and is used as the genre-name for action/adventure stories geared towards boys, usually aged about 11-16 or so. "Shoujo" is the genre for girls of equivalent age.)

From endersgirrrl's review of Bloody Monday:

The shounen manga Bloody Monday was the brainchild of prolific writer Agi Tadashi (credited as Ryumon Ryou), who also penned the manga Kami no Shizuku [...] And it’s interesting how the shounen vs. shoujo genres play to two fundamentally disparate adolescent yearnings: shounen manga panders to every hormonal teenage boy’s most basic non-sexual fantasy, which is to be a Superhero (but — in disguise!!!), while shoujo manga puts a premium on an adolescent female protagonist realizing!her!relationships! — be they romantic or platonic.

Shounen manga is much more result-oriented, i.e. the teenage Hero with a small but loyal band of like-minded friends saves something or someone close to him, with the highest aspiration really being to SAVE THE WORLD. [...] In shounen manga, character development takes a backseat to plot (and plot is really all about Accomplishing!the!Mission!), while in shoujo manga, character development supersedes plot action as the protagonist/s are more focused on working through their feelings and experiencing inner growth — and all that sappy SweetValleyHigh-ish stuff, lol.

[In Bloody Monday, all] the staples of the quintessential shounen manga are here: a teenage Hero with “special abilities” (in this case, hacking and, uh, looking unbelievably good in hoodies); the Hero’s brainy best bud, who has his own “special-but-not-AS-special-as-the-Hero’s abilities” (in this case, archery skills and spouting random useless trivia — like when Christmas Day is really celebrated in Russia); their loyal friends (usually of the same age bracket — in this case, the Newspaper Club at school); the token Hot Chick on the side of the Baddies; a Mission that only the teenage Hero can accomplish (natch!); the techno-gadgetry and gizmo-geekery galore! galore!; and oodles of HardyBoy-esque action — chase sequences! messy explosions! and rooftop standoffs! (oh my!)

[...]

If [the show/manga plot] sounds vaguely familiar, you may recall the Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph) terrorist cult that perpetrated the well-documented sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 commuters and injuring hundreds. [... Given] that the real-life Baddies’ shenanigans are obviously no child’s play, you understand why the manga writer would want to dull the edge of their depravity by sketching up these cartoonized (read = shounen-friendly) versions.

And the best way to dumb down all the crazymonkeybaddies? Is to make the TRUE ringleader… well, just like our teenage Hero. No I mean, literally just like our teenage Hero. So in the end, the Uber-Villain is revealed to be not a 50-year-old barefoot mystic, or a twentysomething math genius, but… oh, just another kid. [...] It’s stupid as sh*t, but you kind of understand how it also reveals the true heart of a 12-year-old manga-wanking fanboy: by vicariously channeling the story’s Hero, he can ONLY save the world IF the villain is just like him – in age, stature and abilities. This really is the ultimate shounen-manga satisfaction: by leveling the playing field, the inherent absurdity of a hormonal teenager saving the world becomes much, much easier to stomach. Whoopeeee. Long live the 12-year-old fanboy, may his precious manga collection never get eaten by termites, may mummy never catch him – uh, doing funny sh*t inside his closet with a stash of ecchi comics, and may he never turn into a sociopathic whack job later in life, lol.

I adore Ender's Girl's reviews, partly for often having some crucial insights I missed while watching, and always for having a completely torqued and spastic sense of humor that clearly loves the shows while skewering them mercilessly. (Even if you haven't seen the show, thus, EG's review is worth the five-minute read if you need a bit of levity in your day.)

( Beyond that, though, I was thinking about something I was told when first writing urban fantasy... )

---

In a semi-related vein, I want to save this somewhere more reliable than just my email inbox, just because it's important to remember. From a thread on femslash, another Branchian piece of brilliant observation:

We can step around the boys, the same way slash steps around the girls, but we have to step wider because they’re taking up more space.

Can anyone name a good AMV (decent to better quality) that would work as an introduction to the range of animation styles in anime? Nostromo's AMVs are definitely high-quality, but Nostromo also seems to focus very strongly on female characters, and I'm thinking something more balanced might be better. It's Tricky To Make A Music Video would definitely be a classic, but its quality is a little low (in terms of what I can download) and the music might be a bit too dated for a classroom. Besides, there's got to be more out there, now, that would have a range of as many diverse videos as ITTMAMV does.

Any suggestions?

There be spoilers in this post, which is both analysis & recommendation for a Taiwanese drama, Gloomy Salad Days. If you're worried about the subjects tackled by the drama, I'll be going into length, so at least you'll know what you're in for (with the cost of not being surprised).

First thing to realize: the entire series (twenty episodes, now fully fansubbed by SUBlimes -- google it) is inundated with pop-idols. You've got your current pretty-face stars, your rising stars, even bit-parts populated by various winners of various reality-show-idol-competition whatsahoosies. The entire cast list (outside of the few adult roles) is, well, mostly pop idols -- and it does seem that this may be the first major acting many of them have done. If you keep that in mind, you may find yourself not irritated at the low level of acting ability, but instead impressed at just how well many of the young cast members pull off some damn hard roles and storylines.

Second thing: the series is loosely based on a Japanese anime, Jigoku Shoujo (Hell Girl). The Taiwanese version was originally to be titled, "Death Girl" (and that right there is an important distinction); I think the final title is because of the song used as the opening, which fits the dark and often hopeless mood of the interior stories rather well.

I make note of the Hell Girl vs Death Girl, because if the Japanese version is strongly Buddhist, the Taiwanese version has major Taoist leanings instead... so a large chunk of the story has been shifted for the difference in world-view. ( Comparing the two versions, and overviews of some of the storylines, especially the one revolving around a transgender student, and the one tackling the issue of bullying. )

Much shorter version: the series is dark, melancholy, at times hampered by inexperienced acting (but not nearly as much as you might expect given the relative inexperience of the cast overall), but the script is solid and thoughtful writing, and it keeps its sympathetic focus entirely on the outcast characters, whatever their role. Transgender, gay, lesbian, abandoned child, child-prostitute, and so on. Some of the episodes are stronger than others, but that's to be expected with such a large and continually changing cast. All in all, though, this isn't your usual candy-fluffy pop-idol drama where someone's making sure the camera always gets the good sides, and the fact that this was marketed for and broadcast to 10-14 year olds just boggles me... and impresses me mightily. Overall, it's a damn gutsy television show.

Lastly: the final four episodes attempt to tie up the connection between Shen Qi and Death Girl, a la the original Jigoku Shoujo... but it's too much at once. The previous episodes had kept a better balance of how much melodrama was piled on, mostly because each storyline focused on a specific part/type of dramatic incident. The final four episodes throw in everything and the kitchen sink, including the dreaded "inappropriate feelings between siblings" (with the nearly-throwaway line to alert you to fake-out, that both siblings were adopted) -- and frankly, even the two experienced leads don't have the chops to keep the melodrama from crushing them. I've mostly browsed through the episodes, only stopping randomly.

You may enjoy the final four, or you may MST3K it out the wazoo, but if it helps, the final four episodes are not really required for any overall understanding. Each two-episode storyline could be considered reasonably standalone (with the possible exception of episodes 7-10, since Li You's story comes into play in Xiao Ju's story).


ps: I guess the wiki entry got un-reverted, because every change I made is now in there. *whistles*

I've been watching a kdrama called Sungkyunkwan Scandal (which I will probably never be able to pronounce, and here I thought Nurarihyon was a tongue-twister). There's a short summary at mehanata.net (along with dl & subs, if you're interested) but the gist is that it's a cross-dressing/genderbender storyline. Girl must pretend to be a boy for various reasons; the stakes are definitely life-or-death (due to historical injunctions against women in neo-Confucianism).

In the most recent episodes, the main love interest has struggled with his growing attraction to our heroine, whom the hero believes to be a boy. It's the same angst-fest (more or less) as in many other genderbender storylines. From what I can tell, one thing that appeals to modern readers about genderbenders (and I'm not counting cross-dressing stories where the intent is farcical) is that on one level, it's illustration of the notion that "girls can play equal to boys", even if this does require that part of "being equal" requires, well, not being a girl. Meanwhile, readers also get to enjoy seeing a boy grapple with his sexuality before coming to the love-affirming position that the sex of the beloved doesn't matter, that his love transcends physical sex. (I also think this decision is seen as affirming because the reader is in on the knowledge of the girl's true identity, so the stakes -- at least for the reader -- are never quite as high as they are for the hero going through the process.)

I know branchandroot discussed this at some point in the past, but I seem to recall her commentary mostly discussed the end-point of any genderbender, which is that ultimately everything does end up heteronormative. The hero's heterosexuality is confirmed when the girl reveals herself to be a girl; the girl takes off the pants and puts the skirt back on; the world returns to its comfortable heteronormative place.

( There's two things I recently realized, while watching SKKS and reading various genderbender manhwa, and if you can think of other examples (or anti-examples), help me out here. )

One of the things that didn't really strike me hard until watching Kekkaishi was an implication that I've seen repeated in plenty of other animanga (and western comics) but never really gave much thought: that girls are, by definition, weaker in every single way.

If we're going to argue that "weakness" is based on a physical standard, then in general it'd probably be relatively true to say that, overall and on average, a woman is "weaker" than a man. (This requires we discount the outliers like "men who spend their days sitting at a desk" contrasted with "women who are Olympic athletes".) If the average height of the American woman is 5-foot-3-inches, and the average height of the American man is 5-foot-11-inches, height and weight and basic build would imply that a man, on average, would probably have more basic strength than a woman when it comes to lifting, shoving, pushing, kicking, and other fundamental ergonomic forms of power.

Coming at it from a former athlete's point of view, I sometimes get annoyed with this simplification, though, because there are different types of strength. There's power -- which is explosive strength: the ability to compress one's muscles and release the compressed power into a single drive. This is the power measured by ergometers (rowing machines). Then there's endurance and stamina, which are a type of strength but one that relies on consistent, long-term, repetitive motion and the ability to continue that motion indefinitely. You can have a lot of explosive power but little stamina, and vice-versa. There's also elastic strength, which is repeated compression and expansion of muscles at rapid pace, like in gymnastics. Someone could do six handsprings without breaking a sweat but still have difficulty moving a washing machine. There are other classifications of strength, but that should be enough to make it clear that we can't simply say that one person is "weak" compared to another person based upon one type of measurement.

Now, in most Western comics, when we talk about superheroes, there seems to be a fundamental assumption that what's powering the hero (or heroine) is, underneath it all, a measurement of physical strength. Catgirl can only get so far against Batman; his larger muscle-mass, height, reach, and explosive power outrank hers, so it appears we have no compunction accepting that in an even fight, he'd eventually have the upper hand. ( Contrast this to animanga, where there's a supernatural aspect, and the source of power is not innate to the person's physical body. It's rooted in something spiritual or supernatural, where the wellspring is within the person but not necessarily on a physical plane. )

Excuse me, I'm going to go rewatch the first five episodes of Seirei no Moribito to make myself feel better.

Just finished watching (finally, after wanting to, for so long) Rahxephon. In short, if Eva has daddy issues, I suppose Rah's got mommy issues... but the art's a great deal better. (So's the story, but I say that as someone who's managed to avoiding seeing Eva for, well, since it came out, and plan to keep doing so, which means comparisons can't go past the superficial level to which Eva has hugely influenced Japanese -- and US -- pop culture.)

Other than ongoing series, also currently catching up on a few more. Yes, all at the same time, trading off one episode to the next in a disorganized round-robin:

Hatenkou Yugi -- genre-savvy, but not where I'm at right now.
B Gata H Kei -- ehehehehehehe.
Bakemonogatari-- like Senkou no Night Raid or Rahxephon (but for different reasons entirely), this one requires a mental break between episodes.
Toward the Terra-- some reviews say "it takes a bit to get used to the character designs". Maybe because it's based on a manga from the late 70s? Very retro. Check out those lapels! Story-wise, though, it pulls no punches.
Heroic Age-- Dude. When the first episode is already a half-assed mixed-bag, I don't think there's much hope.
Now and Then, Here and There-- hmmmm. Verdict still out.
Kimi ni Todoke-- Not my usual style/genre, but totally charmed all the same.

I have no defense as to the amount of shoujo in there, except to say that B Gata H Kei would never ever make it onto American television. EVER. I'm not even sure how it made it onto Japanese television.

Thoughts here are mostly stemming from watching/reading Gegege no Kitaro and Nurarihyon no Mago, but it's a topic I've messed with before (see here, here, and here). The bottom line is a really obvious one, but I'll state it anyway just so you know where I'm coming from: informal, orally-transferred just-so folklore is a huge foundation of any culture, whether we agree with it, believe in it, or even realize it.

I don't mean iconic national images; those are often loosely based on historical events (and more often than not, shading into myth as the decades and centuries pass), though they can certainly become part of what I'm talking about, in a way. I mean simpler things, tiny things you've probably heard a hundred times growing up, that you never give any thought to, because these are just Things We Say.

Here's one I bet most Americans may've heard: "don't open the umbrella inside the house, or the house'll get hit by lightning." Who the hell even believes umbrellas will cause lightning, even on a clear day? "Don't kill that spider, you'll make it rain!" Oh, right, there's a scientific cause-and-effect. ( You can call all these superstitions, and utter nonsense, and stuff that's just Things We Say (But Don't Really Mean). You can say, you're an adult and you know none of this is true... but these are a huge part of our personal stories. )

[not done yet, just too busy to make this all one post]