I can’t help but feel like I’m going to be the minority opinion on this, but, wow is Another disappointing. Whether it is the fact that the cast is a bunch of fifteen year olds, or that it has all the delicacy of a firebomb, I found the first episode to be seriously tedious. Where better horror either opts for immediate screams or a slow-boil sense of evil, Another essentially stands there, pointing, yelling, “Look! Crows! Creepy! And a quiet girl with an eyepatch! More creepy! Oh, oh! And the classmates are all hiding something! ZOMG!!!”. As far as Another is concerned, subtley is a long-lost art.

Of course, I suppose that I should note that I am extremely picky with my horror. I think it is very rarely done well, and that anime typically must work harder at the genre in order to be effective than live action or literature. Essentially, because anime is animated, it is easier to dismiss what is intended as frightening – its a cartoon! Its not real! Which is why the psychological scares of the likes of Shiki and Red Garden function as horror far better than, say, Blood-C or Ookami Kakushi or the majority of Yami no Matsuei (to the exception of the well-executed Devil’s Trill Arc), all of which attempt to actually scare us with beasties and blood-spatter, while lacking the psychological underpinnings to work as horror.

Of course, it could also be that the OP biased me against it fairly quickly. I might be one of few people who doesn’t have a knee-jerk hatred for Ali Project at this point, but the OP felt utterly out of place. The accompanying animation only served to further my feeling that everything is being overdone. And the ED? Ugh. Might as well be Hanairo Season Two or Angel Beats! Season Two.

And, yes, it didn’t at all help that I couldn’t quite manage to avoid comparing it to Shiki. True, Shiki is the best horror I’ve watched in anime, but there is also the simple fact that Fuyumi Ono, who authored the Shiki novels (as well as the Ghost Hunt novels, it may be noted, although while I enjoyed Ghost Hunt overall, the only truly creepy arc was the Blood-stained Labyrinth) is the wife of the author of Another, Yukito Ayatsuji. There was a suggestion amongs some that, due to this relationship, Another was fated to be good. Well, that has yet to be borne out, and I remain extremely skeptical at the moment… although, it could simply be a matter of P.A. Works just not doing a very good job thus far.

Is it worth mentioning, too, that I don’t think P.A. Works is any good as a studio? Hanairo is garbage, Angel Beats! collapsed under its own flaws, Canaan was so-so, and True Tears has been lauded extensively beyond its merits (its decent enough to look at, the characters are developed a bit more than most harem show characters are, and the sudden siscon doesn’t feel shoehorned in; big deal, its still a harem show).

But, really, does any of this additional stuff matter? There is a simple truth here – Another insists on gesticulating wildly at what is supposed to be creepy in it, but fails utterly to actually be creepy. And, this, folks, is the cardinal sin a horror show can commit. Because, if a horror show isn’t creepy, isn’t scary, then it is completely falling short of its purpose for being. While things could certainly turn around, so far Another is terrible; its got quite the hole to dig itself out of already. At this point, I can only hope it somehow manages to endear me slightly to the cast before crutally murdering everyone. An aninerdloser can dream.

EDIT: Whoops, totally forgot to say this: there was actually something I liked about Another. The attention to detail on backgrounds was fairly impressive – you get a real feel for the fact that the town is aging and decaying. I first noticed it with the hospital scenes, where the corners of the room dingy and the paint looked worn, and this continues with things like the railings on the school roof and the bench by the athletic fields. A great touch; pity the rest of it couldn’t take a hint from the background design and tone itself down by a factor of about fifty.

ONE DAY, recent vintage…

Sitting at the laptop, on the Book of Face, scrolling down, being bitchy.

I’m just tired of people being unreal to my face. You know who you are. Why don’t you grow up?

Fucking bitch needs to grow the fuck up, holy shit. I should just un-friend her. But then I’d have less to get bitchy about. Maybe another time.

GET READY FOR NEW YEARS EVE LINGERIE PARTY! ALL MY WALLS ARE COVERED IN FUR, WE’LL STROKE IT AT MIDNIGHT

What the fuck is wrong with this fucker?

I read this great thing today, which I think really shows why Ron Paul is our only option if we care about America…

Unfriend.

Back in Tokyo, gonna check out Comiket tomorrow!

…

Back in Tokyo, gonna check out Comiket tomorrow!

Wait a minute, what the fuck, Comiket? You don’t even like anime, why do you get to go to Comiket?  I like anime, and I don’t get to go to Comiket, what the fuck. This isn’t fair. I picked Japan for my first choice for stationing! First choice!

This is just proof that the universe is stacked against me, a college classmate gets to go to Comiket and he isn’t even into anime. If I were stationed in Japan, I’d go to Comiket… and all those other anime events. This isn’t fair! I wanna go to the cherryblossom festivals, too… dammit, I studied Japanese in college, he studied freaking German, I should be the one there!

…maybe he can pick up some doujin for me. Although this would require revealing how intense my power levels are… and that I love me some BL… and yuri… and I haven’t talked to him in three or four years… does he even remember me? Man, that’d be weird if he doesn’t… or would it be weirder if he does? I don’t know… can I ask him to look for a Shiki doujin that has buttsex? That’s a weird favor to ask, isn’t it? I mean, I’d be willing to ask fellow aninerdlosers I know in the blogosphere, but I already know they’re just as out there as I am! Who knows with this guy?

Well, he probably wouldn’t recognize any of the series anyway! This is why I should get to go, not him!

*sulks* Fine, I’ll just watch some more Kashimashi… and he wouldn’t know what that is, either! Uguuuuuuuuuuuu

Or, Milky Holmes II.

Ah, Milky Holmes II. One of only two shows I had any interest in prior to the beginning of the Winter 2012 season. The first season was shockingly enjoyable; evidence had suggested that it was going to be some stupid moe dreck, yet it turned out to be a send-up of the genre in which moe traits considered as “positive” were taken to their logical extreme, resulting in only bad things.

It was also really fucking bizarre. And this season has managed to make it even stranger.

The season opens with the Milky Holmes crew even dumber than they were in the previous iteration, merrily sleeping all day and spending their waking hours solely in pursuit of food. They also fall into a pond with enough frequency that they carry shampoo, soap, and conditioner with them at all times. Also, they’ve acquired another pet in addition to their ugly cat, although it ends up getting lit on fire at the end of the episode, so who knows what’ll happen there.

I’m pretty happy with this episode, as it indicates that season two will be more of the same. There’d been some rumbling that this was going to be a new adaptation of the video games, as opposed to a sequel of the first season, so it was great to see that they didn’t do that. Moe shows starring four girls are a dime a dozen, and generally about as thrilling as a dead water buffalo; we hardly need another added to the pile.

The budget seems a touch higher this time around, just based on animation quality, but this still isn’t going to win any awards on that front. Which, really, is fine – I’d rather have a poorly animated yet enjoyable show than something shiny and shitty (heya, Guilty Crown!). The OP is better than last time, still not great, though. The real drop is for the ED, which was actually a fairly catchy song last time, although the lack of fanservice of the Milky Holmes girls in school swimsuits is a welcome one, as it always felt weird and out of place in a show that was mocking the moe craze. Sure, there’s a bit of Arsene being naked and underclothed, but she’s never actually behaved like a high-schooler or looked like one to begin with, so it doesn’t leave a weird feeling in me.

Oh, and, in case you were wondering, ‘Dai-ni-Maku’ means ‘second curtain’, which as far as names for sequels go isn’t bad, although Milky Holmes II will be my default.

So! Looking forward to this new season of Milky Holmes! At least I know I’ll have one show from the winter that I finish!

I don’t know where this bus is going

Even though I should be the driver.

There was going to be a picture on this post, but my connection simply would not oblige.

UN GO UN GO UN GO. This show enthralled me. Even when the details of the foreground seemed a bit lacking, the background details that leeched in were enough to entrance me. A society controlled by terror, in that unique manner in which acts of terror so often simply lead to greater grips of the government upon a populace. Rampant censorship. A Tokyo half in ruin – which, yes, isn’t terribly uncommon in anime, but was executed much more effectively and interestingly here. And a society divided, the haves and have nots! The police more than willing to change the narrative to keep the haves out of prison…

Its difficult for me to write this post and not end up having it completely messy, because for it to not be messy would require more effort than I am willing to put into a blog post! I don’t use notes. I don’t want to use notes. Its a blog, not a term paper. And, even with those I often went without notes anyway. I am a firm believer in the ‘jam everything in your head and then puke it all out on paper’ school of writing/thought/presenting. So, maybe not always paper, sometimes its ‘jam everything in your head and then present it rapid-fire and with an eye on your audience at all times’ school of existence.

But, I digress.

Aside: in episode two, the girl and Blue Yokohama. She spoke of her grandmother singing it, being in anoher country where they weren’t allowed to speak Japanese, something about a war. I think it was a reference to the practice of interning Japanese-Americans during WWII. Something we generally choose to ignore…

Speaking of America! UN GO frequently felt very American to me, even as it simultaneously at points felt extremely Japanese (most obviously, in the manner in which the mysteries were generally solved, i.e. Inga forcing the truth out through MAGIC). For those of you who aren’t American, I don’t know if I can convey precisely the mood of America for the past ten years. America has a monomania with terrorism, despite the fact that is is a relatively rare occurrence in America, and the additional fact that there is a refusal by most of the populace and large swaths of the government to acknowledge some acts as terroristic in nature (basically, if a Caucasian did it, certain segments shake their heads and say the person was crazy, but if a Muslim did it, its automatically terrorism, regardless of any additional facts; it even extends to acts of terror in other countries, such as with Anders Behring Breivik’s white supremacist-motivated slaughter of seventy-seven people in Norway – massacre by a crazy man! not “white supremacist terrorism”).

But you don’t really need to hear my politics, do you? Although it isn’t really politics, so much as an assessment of some rather basic truths about present-day America, race, religion, politics, and news in a television age.

Yes, so, America, loves thinking about terrorism all the time, politicians love the bogeyman since it is so effective at getting the votes out. But it isn’t just the politicians, it has saturated our entire culture, particularly popular culture. To go by broadcast television shows, one would think that people are basically getting blown up all the time by terrorists, and that one could only ensure their own safety by hiding in their cellar all the live long day. Mass paperback thrillers are full of evil guys murdering innocent and pretty Americans (other way to ensure terrorism won’t hurt you: be ugly) on massive scale. There’s no escape!

So, UN GO’s terrorism material felt very American to me, although the way in which it addressed it did not. Or, rather, the way it was addressed was not the way I could reasonably expect it to be addressed in American popular culture. Because we were shown that acts of terror were actively manipulated by the government to garner support for repressive measures. The entire thing with the idol group was utterly brilliant. Manufacture stories, alter stories, so that you captivate the population, use their sympathy to further political gains. And they don’t even realize they’re all being played like fiddles.

I was surprised to hear Shinjuuro say that it was 2011 in one of the last few episodes. 2011? I figured this was further into the future than that, perhaps because of the advanced technology present. Not only is it 2011, its a world in which September 11th happened, so at some point soon after that, UN GO’s world split off from our own, with Japan catching the terror bug as well. While I wouldn’t say that American society is quite as repressive as the Japanese society depicted in UN GO, there are some similarities and familiarities, particularly legislation with innocuous-sounding titles that is actually fairly draconian (USA PATRIOT Act is probably the most infamous). The parliament and politicians of UN GO’s Japan insist their legislation is necessary for the people, even as the people find themselves less and less free. Maybe some of this sentiment was a reflection of real world Japan and Bill 156 as well – while not about terrorism at all, it does allege to be about keeping children and teenagers safe, and about protecting their “development”. Actually, really, we know it is – “The New Information Privacy and Protection Act” of UN GO is a pretty obvious stand-in, what with its whole conceit of protecting the “wholesome upbringing” of children. This was more or less torn right from the pages of legislation in real world Japan.

But, regressing somewhat, UN GO’s world splitting from our own. There is almost a direct statement of fear here, as it is noted that things went sideways after Japan sent its self defense forces overseas. If I’m remembering correctly, Japan actually did end up pulling its troops from Iraq after a couple of their journalists/photographers were kidnapped and held by terrorists, who threatened to kill them if Japan did not exit the theater entirely (and this despite the fact that Japanese troops in Iraq were assigned humanitarian aid roles; the people holding the guns for them were primarily Australians, although there were some Japanese special forces troops playing protector as well). Public opinion of the deployment was pretty starkly divided in Japan – lot of folks were very, very angry that the defense forces were being sent abroad, since that seems a pretty clear violation of their purpose, i.e. defending Japan and only defending Japan. Some were also concerned that by involving themselves explicitly in Iraq, Japan would become a target of Islamist terrorism’s ire as well.

In UN GO, its never entirely clear as to whom was responsible for the terrorism and why. We have one woman who is in prison for terrorism, who took action out of anger at the government’s lack of aid rendered to people like her, i.e. impoverished and starving. But she speaks vaguely of a group that got her to do it, and we never know if the group had the same motivations as she did, or simply exploited her anger for their own ends. And it all began somewhere – with terrorism. The woman’s unfortunate position, was it prior to the beginning of terror, or did her circumstances come about because of said terror? So we don’t know if the terror originally was largely from foreign elements (al-Qaeda types, if we’re going to assume that the Japanese troops went to Iraq in UN GO’s Japan), domestic groups angry about the perceived misuse of the Self Defense Force, or domestic groups angry that the government is inviting terrorist groups to target Japanese people by its foreign interventions. Or if its someone else entirely.

We can also see fears about foreign involvement in an official fashion in Japan, although they get less pronounced as the show goes on. Phrased as such to distinguish from foreign elements like terrorists who are mucking about. Its noted early on that a foreign military basically bailed Japan out from spiraling terrorist attacks. I must confess that I can’t quite recall if it was said that they were American, or there was just the implication that they were. While I am sure UN GO had a bit of planning done on it prior to the tsunami last March, it is worth noting that there was nervousness in Japanese society over relying so heavily on foreign aid in the wake of that disaster (I actually know some fellow soldiers who were assigned to help with rescue efforts in the affected provinces).

Now, of course, Japan has historically been fairly xenophobic (related: you know what I’ve always thought would be interesting? doing a historical compare and contrast of Japan and Great Britain; they have similar arcs of history and have had/still have similar relationships to their mainlands, with WWII as an obvious exception, and similar attitudes about foreign elements… is this what happens with islands?). But, even considering so, xenophobia has found a rather comfortable audience in present-day Japan in a more obvious way; just take a moment to examine Governor Ishihara of Tokyo and his policies and beliefs. He doesn’t like dem furreners (or women [they should just go die once they're no longer fertile!]. or LGBT people [their DNA is warped!].). And, not only that, dem furreners are basically responsible for everything wrong with Japan (you know, total aside, when in Ireland once, I heard a person on the radio angrily insisting that everything wrong with Ireland currently is because the Irish drink wine in the evenings instead of tea nowadays). Just another thing to consider with UN GO’s foreign armies saving/ruining Japan – most of the troops running around throughout the show are implied to be foreign in origin in the first couple of episodes, with the foreigners not departing after their act of salvation. And the wife/culprit in the first episode angrily talks about her husband being slandered for alleged involvement with foreign elements.

I think I’ve managed to exhaust the points I wanted to make in this post. Hope that wasn’t too much like reading something written by a drunk, concussed person. And, damn, I didn’t even talk about RAI’s at all… oh well. Another time. I’m going to re-watch the whole thing anyway. Wish Sentai would hurry up and give the damn thing a street date.

While I am sure that some of you are familiar with the reference, if you are not, please refer to Jigoku Shoujo’s favorite search engine, Deegle, with terms ‘stephen colbert’ and ‘threatdown’.

Now that you are up to speed, the 2011 Anime/Manga Threatdown, in no particular order, despite the numbering:

1. Manglobe

ZOMG MANGLOBE MADE SAMURAI CHAMPLOO ONCE AND NOW THEY JUST MAKE HAREM SHIT ZOMGZOMGZOMG

2. Yamakan

He saved anime! By promising to leave it! But he’ll probably be back anyway!

3. Fractale

Six hundred something copies sold. If anime doesn’t sell, it’ll die! Dammit, Fractale!

4. Bill 156

While the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths was voted in in late 2010, it went into effect in July of this past year. It is honestly difficult to gauge its effects or lack thereof on the industry thus far, as it hasn’t been in effect a terribly long time, and, well, most of us are not actually in Japan and so cannot directly observe what is going on on the ground. We do know that it put a serious dent in the Tokyo International Anime Fair in the booking stages, to the extent that revenue estimates were adjusted downwards by $1.3 million as groups signaled they were going to boycott the event and vendor spaces went unbooked, although that event was outright canceled due to the earthquake and tsunami in March.

So what does it mean? While I may not be able to say for certain, censorship has a chilling affect wherever it happens. Perhaps most worrisome, though, is that mobile phone companies are required under the bill to have filtering on the cellphones of anyone under the age of eighteen, and if a parent wants the filtering removed, they must petition the government. Really? Look, I’m not going to quibble with parental controls, since its the perogative of the parent, but these are governmental controls, and its absurd that a parent must beg the government if they wish to have the controls removed. Man, if there’d been filtering on the home computer when I was a kid, I probably wouldn’t've figured out what the hell sex was until I was sixteen!

5. Baby Princess

What the fuck was this shit?

6. Kyoto Animation

What the hell were you doing this year? Everyone else in the industry was actively trying to murder all our brain cells with shitty adaptations of shittier visual novels, and you were fidgeting around making boring comedies and movies about moeblobs who like tea. You’re supposed to remind us that, sometimes, visual novel adaptations can be awesome by bringing us the Little Busters TV series. You better watch the hell out, or we’re gonna get stuck with P.A. Works adapting that damn thing, and we all know what those bozos are like.

7. noitaminA

For a block that’s supposed to be reasonably intelligent, you sure are trying to render harm unto those of us who have more than two brain cells to rub together. Anohana, Fractale, [C] the Possibility of Whatever the Fuck it Was, GUILTY FUCKING CROWN… and next up is Black Rock Shooter. Thermae Romae better unexpectedly amazing, you jerks. And, no, Wandering Son and UN GO do not make up for all of it, even though they were fantastic.

GUILTY FUCKING CROWN

8. GUILTY FUCKING CROWN

Holy fucking shit, way to use a decent list of production names and a decent studio to blind people to the fact that the promo art screamed “THIS IS GONNA SUCK! JIGGLE-JIGGLE!” Just earlier I was mocking someone for thinking this was going to be good, and pointed out that the promo art said everything. Look, folks, it isn’t the presence of half-naked boobs all over the damn stuff that is necessarily the damning part… if you are looking at promo art, and the female character featured is sprawled backwards, making o-faces, and looking helpless, this is a pretty good indication that you are not going to get a quality product, and that that girl’s gonna have all the personality and force of will of your average jellyfish. Saying “tit-tastic” is just shorthand, since we know the likes of Faye Valentine are boobtacular in official art and yet isn’t a blushing dishrag with breasts. For fun, put pictures of Inori and Faye side-by-side, and spot the differences in how they’re positioned, their facial expressions, their body language, etc.

Happy New Year.

And so it ends.

Ah, 2011. A pretty down year for me, insofar as anime is concerned, as I managed to finish a measly seven shows of those currently airing, the bulk of them focused in the autumn. In fact, if not for the autumn, the year would’ve been a serious wash for current shows, as I finished merely one show in the first half of the year (did finish a second from winter later on), and two from the summertime. Thankfully, the autumn seemed to realize that it’d been a shitty year for anime, and delivered two shows I’ve finished (UN GO, Fate/Zero), one I’m in the process of finishing (Tamayura~Hitotose~), and two others I am following (Future Diary, Chihayafuru), although a seriously terrible connection has hindered my ability to follow along on a weekly basis.

On the flip side, its been a fairly good year for shows I was either stalled on or have owned on DVD for a while and never quite gotten around to. Blame it on the bad internet connection, I suppose! In the month of November, I plowed through four TV series despite having a workload that kept me away from blogging and kept me largely away from my own place of residence.

I’ve found myself enjoying manga more than ever before this year, despite the shuttering of Borders and therefore the sudden disappearance of my major source of manga purchases. If only Viz would publish more titles like solanin and shift its focus just slightly away from random shounen adventure #86,000…! But, thankfully we have a plethora of publishers in this day and age such that the loss of Tokyopop, while regretful on a nostalgic level, did not even leave the slightest of pinching feelings. And, surely, it does help to remove a publisher known for cut-rate production and terrible wages from the picture, does it not? I’m happy to pay those extra two dollars, or three or four dollars, for a high quality product we get from publishers such as Vertical and Fantagraphics. The market may be changing, but in 2011, at least, it seemed to be moving in the right direction, death of a massive publisher be damned.

Manga. Its an interesting thing, because it simply seems more suited to the life of a working adult. I read it on lunchbreaks as I eat in the back of my truck, my fingers numb in the cold. I read it on the train when I commuted. No wonder its such a massive market in Japan! Its so convenient! And I can find stories so much more easily about those magical creatures called adults.

But, anime. Back to that. For current series I finished in 2011:

• Tiger & Bunny
• Uta no Prince-sama – Maji LOVE 1000%
• Mawaru Penguindrum
• UN GO
• Fate/Zero
• Aki-Sora: Yume no Naka
• Magi Puella Madoka Magica

And I’ll finish Tamayura TV before the clock ticks out Saturday at the rate I’m moving. So, you can see it was a pretty thin year for me.

Toss in non-current anime:

• Red Garden
• 009-1
• Weiß kreuz
• Weiß Kreuz Glühen
• Senkou no Night Raid
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam
• Mad Bull 34
• Superdimensional Romanesque Samy: Missing 99
• Harbor Light Monogatari: Fashion Lala Yori
• Lily to Kaeru to Otouto
• Urotsukidouji
• The Tatami Galaxy
• Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie
• Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

I could be forgetting some things, but I’m pretty sure that about covers it. There’s a lot of crap on the list, but I feel that my success ratio was much higher with these versus my attempts with various airing shows. Red Garden was good enough that I wondered why on earth I didn’t watch it when it aired, and why on earth I stalled out on it when I bought it about two years ago. Senkou no Night Raid was also quite good, ditto The Tatami Galaxy. Lily to Kaeru to Otouto was surprisingly enjoyable. And Weiß Kreuz was just as awesome as it should’ve been. The rest ranged from unwatchable (Urotsukidouji) to just plain bizare (Harbor Light Monogatari, a Cinderella story which suddenly involves disco, biker gangs, and terrorists). And then there’s Weiß Kreuz Glühen, that rare bird where an improvement in animation from original show to sequel actually hurt the show. But I’ll do a post about that someday.

And for random Japanese junk, I watched the J-Drama ‘Tumbling’, a show about a high school boys’ rhythmic gymnastic team. And it was much better than it really had any right to be, although don’t go calling me a concert to the medium anytime soon.

A top five for the year? There are only three shows which aired this year that I could in good faith put in a list like that. While I enjoyed Fate/Zero quite a bit, much to my surprise, I don’t feel that it warrants top five status. Really, its that there’d be such a huge drop-off in quality from three to four  that I couldn’t do that. So, top three: Mawaru Penguindrum and UN GO tied, Wandering Son right behind.

For a true top five, that of all I watched this year for anime:

1. Mawaru Penguindrum/UN GO
2. Red Garden
3. Wandering Son
4. Senkou no Night Raid

But even if the entire year had been shit, Mawaru Penguindrum would’ve made the whole thing worthwhile. Because, even with its own flaws, Penguindrum was weirdly wonderful, and was a reminder of the sorts of stories anime can tell, should it so choose to. In a sea of harem trash and dull “comedies”, Penguindrum kicked us in the teeth gleefully from week to week, leaving everyone thrashing about madly, trying to make sense of it all. And we still are trying to, by the sounds of things.

And UN GO. Can’t quite go without at least referencing it, although on it alone the year could not have floated. This may beg why it ties with Penguindrum, but it was worthwhile in a slightly different fashion. I’ve already started re-watching it, although it just concluded, since there are things which flit about just out of my reach that I could catch ahold of if I watch it all more closely spaced. Terrorism and totalitarianism and freedom of thought and the post-9/11 world! For a show produced elsewhere, it felt shockingly American at times, even as it just as often was so thoroughly Japanese.

And there’s something interesting: two shows this year which had a serious consideration of the phenomenon of terrorism and its ramifications for societies or their people, as opposed to it simply being a prop (I’m looking at you, Full Metal Panic, although I cannot fully comment on your “true” sequel).

I hazard to say that Mawaru Penguindrum was an exorcism of the 1995 sarin gas attacks, by the way. And by Ikuhara’s approach to meaning in his works, I would be right, but so would you if you disagree.

And I’ve wandered about a bit. In closing, I’ll just note that if you saw and enjoyed Magi Puella Madoka Magica, you should watch Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (a.k.a. Marina Inoue’s first voice acting gig), as it is the direct ancestor of Madoka Magica. In fact, Homura’s… “house” is almost exactly the same in design as the antiques’ shop in Petit Cossette. It is also the last time Shinbo and Kajiura worked together, and if you close your eyes to listen to the Petit Cossette soundtrack, you’ll hear it immediately. If nothing else, Madoka Magica was the first time in years that Kajiura has turned out a score that isn’t wholly indistinguishable from everything else she’s ever worked on. If you can tell the difference between the Mai-HiME and Pandora Hearts soundtracks, you’re a better person than me.

Indeed.

Ah, here we go – the age-old argument! The utterly befuddling argument! The argument that, really, shouldn’t even be happening, since the evidence on one side is so overwhelming as to beg the question of why this keeps getting hashed over. But, hey, as long as people keep trying to insist yuri is a genre created for lesbian and bisexual women, I suppose I’ll just have to keep refuting this spurious claim.

I recently started watching Kashimashi~Girl Meets Girl~, having only managed two episodes of it when it originally aired (for those of you wondering, I was largely driven off by the father of the lead and his repulsive, pervy antics). You may wonder why I even bothered, and I’ll admit my answers aren’t very good – it was on sale at Right Stuf, and, well, why the hell not?

So far, its pretty bland. It also feels much more dated than it actually is, due in large part to the ridiculous involvement of aliens in the storyline. Contrast this with Level E, where the presence of aliens did feel very 90′s but in a nostalgic, enjoyable way. Here they just signify one of several utterly deranged plot developments.

But, hey, I’ll get around to reviewing this another time. For now, let’s just focus on this: Kashimashi is the perfect example of how we know yuri is not made for lesbian and bisexual women. THE PERFECT EXAMPLE!

Let us consider this: Yasuna, whom Hazumu has a crush on, rejects Hazumu… not exactly because she dislikes him, but because she suffers from an ailment which renders her unable to see men clearly – instead they show up as blurs. (By the way, in a much better show, this ailment could be made to work and could be made something interesting, by asking – why? why does Yasuna have this problem? and have some legitimate psychological basis for it.)

Folks, if this had been a show made for bisexual and lesbian women, this entire piece of stupidity would’ve been avoided, because Yasuna would’ve rejected Hazumu because she isn’t attracted to men. Plain and simple! Or, she would’ve rejected Hazumu because she’s only been attracted to women previously, and is confused by the fact that she seems attracted to him.

…of course, this all ignores the fact that, really, if the show was meant for ladies like myself, there would’ve never been any weird shenanigans with Hazumu becoming a girl because aliens killed him by accident. But I think pointing out the matter of Yasuna’s… disability illuminates my point much more clearly than bothering to go into that.

Anyway. Send your “yuri is meant for lesbians!”-spouting morons my way. I’ll be more than happy to set them straight. Pun certainly intended.

We only see her for a moment, but the daughter-less Junko Kaname is a far-cry from the fierce businesswoman we’ve come to know.

So, I did actually finish up Puella Magi Madoka Magica several months ago, and, yes, I do prefer the bastardized Latin version title. I couldn’t really explain to you precisely why, as even I’m not fully sure of the reason, but I suspect it has something to do with an enjoyment of the way Latin words relating to witchcraft sound (maleficum). Eh, who knows.

I’m not going to truly go into my overall opinion on the show, except to note that I really enjoyed the final three episodes and found the preceding ten largely tiresome and, really, repellant in the pornographic way in which the suffering of the characters was presented. But, hey, I’ll probably write a review someday, so we can bicker about my opinions on quality and enjoyment at that juncture.

Now, as for this post. It was partially prompted by ghostlightning’s 12 Days post on Madoka Magica, which dislodged the nagging feeling I’d had at the close of the show in regards to Junko, Madoka’s mother. We only catch a glimpse of her in the Madoka-less timeline, but its clear that the woman we are seeing is a very different one than the one we observed interacting with her daughter throughout the show. And I was, honestly, pretty disappointed in the change, as it seemed she’d become simply another mild-mannered mother, not the fiery, headstrong businesswoman dishing out hard truths to her daughter. Mother characters are so frequently a bland factor in anime that it was delightful to see such a break with tradition, and such a disappointment to have her end up as so many legion others.

It is also worth noting that mothers are fairly absent in magical girl shows, either dead (CardCaptor Sakura, Sugar Sugar Rune), absent (Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne), or fully in the background (Sailor Moon, which has the distinguishing factor of having TWO mothers for the lead who have barely any screentime!) (and some have all three! I’m looking at you, Ojamajo Doremi). If you think on it, its a curiously missed opportunity. I would fully welcome magical girl shows wherein mothers played larger roles. Boys in shounen fare often wish to follow in their father’s footsteps, after all.

I do digress, though.

“It’s harder to raise girls.”, “Girls are harder to raise.” I don’t know how common this is a sentiment in other cultures, but I know in my own its a common enough phrase that it rarely raises an eyebrow. I do know, however, that it really pisses my own mother off. I can recall one time in particular my mother expressing disgust over a relative of ours stating it as fact in conversation. I was a teenager at the time. She told me it was a load of crap, that kids are generally troublesome in their own unique ways, and pointed out examples amongst her friends. And then she sighed and reminded me that she always got phone calls from the school over my brother not paying attention in class and over me beating up other kids. “Kids are difficult either way. But I like it mostly anyway.” She smiled.

But I do think we can spin this another way. In our cultures, and in most cultures, raising girls is harder… not because of something inherent in a boy or inherent in a girl, but because of the ways in which our cultures treat girls versus boys. Its harder to raise a girl because there are so many negative messages constantly being directed at her by the larger culture, because she must work harder to be taken seriously.

Which brings us back to Madoka Magica. In the first episode, Junko applies make-up in the bathroom with Madoka, telling her that women must always look their best. I was annoyed by this initially, but I came to realize that Junko was just passing along an unfortunate truth to her daughter. She’s helping prep her daughter for the world as it is, because to her its the best way that she can ensure her daughter has the spine necessary to make it in the world. And we all know the Madoka we meet at that moment in time really needs all the help she can get.

As ghostlightning writes in his post, Junko has another heart-to-heart with Madoka a few episodes later in which she speaks to her daughter as one adult to another, not as an adult to a child. Once again, she’s presenting harsh truths to her daughter, educating her about the world. This is how the world is – it isn’t great, but this is how you deal with it… and its worth dealing with it.

Our last look at this Junko is when Madoka leaves to accept her fate. Junko isn’t happy to have her go at all, but she relents, knowing she has to.

And then… we see the shy mother of Madoka’s younger brother, seeming unsure in the face of Homura, the only person in the world who fully remembers a young woman named Madoka Kaname. Its a far cry from the woman we’ve become accustomed to. Raising girls is hard. Without a daughter, Junko lacks the toughness she previously possessed; she hasn’t needed it as she did before. As much as I dislike seeing her having become such a boring person, its an interesting message to have found in the show.

Hurr hurr tits.

Amazingly, people still apparently read my blog. I base this statement on the fact that I had new comments since I last checked in here, and the number of hits has remained relatively stable in the roughly two weeks since my last post. Kudos for your faithfulness, I suppose?

For better or worse, I’ve been spending time hacking my way through my backlog of already-owned shows, since I really can’t stream where I am right now and so can’t keep up with most of the shows airing currently. I also have a connection far too slow to sustain much downloading. But, hey, finally watching shit I’ve owned forever, fuck yeah!

I started with Weiss Kreuz, watched its sequel, and then when I decided I felt like more crappy assassin shows, grabbed 009-1′s discs and tossed them in. However, while the first episode seemed to confirm that 009-1 would be a Cold War cheesecake-y romp, things quickly moved in a direction where it’d be disingenuous to class it with the likes of Weiss Kreuz.

Now, this isn’t to say that 009-1 is good, necessarily. It has some pretty solid episodes, although on the balance it clocks in at ‘decent’. That it starts off as tits and ass spy antics before deciding to attempt a serious business storyline about mutants (who are either test subjects or the targets of death squads) is really the sticking point – they don’t gel terribly well. While some of the more serious episodes were pretty decent, the mutant storyline was fairly clunky and seemed to have been tossed in at the last moment. The show should’ve stuck to heavier fare that involve our heroine, Mylene, directly – stuffing in the mutant material was overkill and awkward. And, really, at this point, if you’re going to have mutants running around in your story to make moral points, you need to remember that X-Men and Terra e… are going to be your most likely comparison points. Both blow 009-1′s attempts out of the water.

“But Day,” you may say, “009-1′s manga pre-dates both of those!”

True. But 009-1′s anime does not. Simply copying from the original material is no excuse for a lackluster arc. Especially when something more engaging is already at hand, as Mylene’s family history is intermixed with the mutant storyline, although there is no need for it. It would’ve been easy to substitute another crisis (there is an attempt by mutants to force humankind at large to cease their abuse and murder of all mutants which involves nuclear weapons) in as the axis upon which Myelene’s sudden revelation turns. Trying to stuff in a moral of the story while Mylene’s background is explored is simply overdoing it.

Thus, 009-1 is at its best when its either a. tight clothes, short skirts, and espionage, or b. tight clothes, short skirts, espionage, and explorations of the character’s psyches. 009-1 really isn’t bad at the latter, although Mylene’s story is hardly original.

But, really, what is most intriguing about 009-1 is how terribly Cold War it feels. Which makes sense, considering the manga was published during the height of said conflict. It also feels incredibly American, if anything, with our cyborg spy working on behalf of the Western Bloc after having fled the East for the sake of freedom. Members of the Eastern Bloc are by and large ugly, cruel, and are generally dead by the time the ED music queues up. Members of the Western Bloc are attractive (at least, the women are), conscientious, and most likely to help a stranger out.

On the other hand, the Western Bloc shoots mutants whereas the Eastern Bloc experiments on them. Its hard to decide which is the crueler option of the two. But it doesn’t alter the fact that the plot, characters, and viewpoint don’t feel terribly Japanese, even if the visuals are a dead giveaway.

If it sounded like I was being harsh about 009-1, I actually enjoyed it a fair bit. The mutant storyline should’ve been axed, but overall it was a decent show. I’m not sure I can recommend it wholly, as I do think a lot of enjoyment rests upon how much you like or dislike Cold War stories involving spies (and your enjoyment or tolerance of cheesecake). While I don’t enjoy those poorly-written paperback thrillers taking place during the Cold War, I do nevertheless find the era fascinating. You could certainly do worse than 009-1.