Wis[s]e Words – Ceci N'est pas Un Blog

No overdrive, just undercooked — Highspeed Etoile — First Impressions

Published on April 21, 2024Leave a comment

It’s a bold strategy to start off your first episode emulating the most boring bits about Formula One. Let’s see if it pays off.

Some racing cars trying to overtake each other

Spoilers: it didn’t.

It didn’t because the people involved with Highspeed Etoile seem neither to know nor care about how to make a race look interesting. This is no Initial D. There’s no sense of speed, no tactics or strategy at play here. There’s just the King and Queen, who, the commentators tell us, have been number one and two whole season with nobody else getting a look in, and they’re just faster and that’s it. The only real tactic on display during the two races in episode one and two is that the Queen has a team mate who cuts off anybody who tries to overtake him in third place, so that she can fight her battle with the King in peace. That does not for interesting racing make, having all the competition stuck behind you having to ride the Dick train.

Richard is keeping all the other cars in a single file behind him.

It’s not inherently a bad idea to introduce your cast and setting through a race: gets the adrenaline pumping, gives you some idea of who these people are through how they race, uses the commentators to inclue you on the strategies used and background of the race. Initial D did it all the time even with terrible nineties animation and CGI. But here it just feels like toy cars running on a toy track with no sense of personality for either the driver or the car. There’s no weight to it. I thought that maybe things would’ve improved with the second episode when I sat down to watch it this morning, as that finally introduced the actual protagonist, but most of the episode consisted of similar dull racing as the first. Worse, said protagonist turned out to be such a rookie that she didn’t realise she was lapped by the race leaders! I understand making her the underdog outsider, but this was just embarassing.

Yankee with a heart of gold — Wind Breaker — First Impressions

Published on April 7, 2024Leave a comment

No better protagonist for a yankee anime than a guy who has no problem beating up half a dozen thugs only to get blushy and tsundere when their victims thanks him:

It's not like I saved you or anything!

Yankees are what Japan calls a certain kind of teenage criminal: violent, engaged in petty crime, but usually with some code of honour guiding them, thought his of course is more usual in fiction than real life. Managa and anime have always had a soft spot for these people, so aggressively doing their own thing in a society that values conformity above almnost anything else. Sakura is the perfect protagonist for this sort of series. Slightly dumb, overtly focused on violence as a solution to all his problems. Not sadistic, just obsessed with proving he is the strongest as the only way he can get any respect. Having always been judged a criminal, up to no good because of the way he looks, he felt he had no choice but to fight to earn his place int he world.

A crowd of shadowy figures is looking at the camera calling the protagonist gross

All of which is revealed or implied in the very effective first minute and a half of the episode, where Sakura is walking a metaphorical tightrope as he recalls the disgust and anger of his class mates, teachers and family. No wonder he wanted to transfer to the worst school in Japan, a school with a reputation as yankee heaven, where he can fight as much as he pleases to become the strongest. Reality turns out to be slightly different however, because somebody already had gone through this story two years ago and they reformed the school to the point where the juvenile deliquents now guard the peace in the city. As the women he rescues tells him, this means that he will never reach the top, as he’s alone. But alone is what he has always been, so he doesn’t understand what she’s trying to say at all.

Sakura is carrying around enough psychological baggage to make for a satisfying protagonist and that other necessary element for a yankee series, the extreme but stylish violence is also tackled. The fights here operate on the kung fu movie principle, where mobs of adversaries politely wait their turn to be beaten one by one by the hero. There is however some element of realism in these fights: when a sneak attack gets Sakura cut on the ankle, the wound does debilitate him enough that he momentarily cannot defend himself.

I really liked this first episode; I always love a good yankee series and this looks to be an excellent one.

Maybe check his hard drive?

Published on April 5, 2024Leave a comment

Why is Greg Smallwood taking a principled stance for the rights of abusers not to have their careers harmed by their own actions:

I’m done pretending that an apology or atonement gets you anywhere with these people. Tell me, Liam – did an apology change Warren Ellis’s circumstances? How about Jason Latour’s? Cameron Stewart? Brian Wood? There is no path and you know it.

Has Ed Piskor’s suicide unhinged him that much? Why does he feels so much sympathy for abusers but not their victims? Ellis abused, hurt and damaged the careers of literally dozens of people, many of whom had to leave comics because of it. Smallwood never mentions them, but he is very upset that people “bullied” Ed Piskor. Where the ‘bullying’ consisted of two women accusing him of secual harassment. Piskor committed suicide a week later and left a suicide note in which he blamed various cartoonists including one of the women who accused him for it.

Which on its own is a tragedy, but is also incredibly spiteful, to use your last action in this world to try and start a lynch mob, handing an excuse to people like Smallwood to start a harassment campaign. Maybe Piskor did have mental health issues that drove to suicide, but that doesn’t excuse this, nor does it make his accusers into retroactive bullies. In the end he turned to be somebody who couldn’t hack it that his own actions had maybe destroyed his career.

Smallwood is worse though, using Piskor’s suicide as an excuse to rehabilitate some of comics’ worst abusersm, trying to frame it as an antibullying campgain. You’d expect that from the comics gaters, the usual frothing rightwing assholes eager to attack women and people of colour and who indeed have joined in harassing the people mentioned in Piskor’s suicide note. Way to out yourself as being the same, when you could’ve just kept your mouth shut. The eagerness with which Smallwood insists people like Brian Wood or Warren Ellis should be able to “return to comics”, that somehow they still deserve a career despite ruining those of their victims, but that mean bullies won’t let them no matter how sorry they are, is vile. If anything it shows he’s not a safe person to be around.

One for the shotacons? — First Impressions

Published on April 4, 2024Leave a comment

It’s good to see that [deep breath] Tensei shitara Dainana Ouji Datta node, Kimama ni Majutsu wo Kiwamemasu the anime is as horny for its protagonist as the manga version is:

Prince Lloyd is a black haired ten year old boy with big blue eyes and a shiny tights, dressed in short shorts

As the seventh prince and much younger then his brothers, prince Lloyd is not in line for the throne, which is a good thing because it means he can read and study magic. It turns out he’s the reincarnation of a commoner who tried to dabble in magic and got burned to death by a nobleman for his efforts and now as a prince he has all the time in the world to practise. He even didn’t mind being burned to death as his love for magic was so strong. Reborn, he now he has unlimited magical power, so much power even the demon sealed in the castle’s forbidden library is no match for him.

Prince Lloyd in baths urrounded by maids

Very much another ‘reincarnated protagonist gains ultimate power from his past life’ series, with some minor tweaks. The most obvious being the whole shotacon thing here. All the maids for one are almost as horny for him as the series itself is. From the manga it’s all treated as comedy rather than anything more serious, but if you dislike series that are iffy on informed consent, this may cross the line too much. As an adaptation it’s well done, with some actually good looking animation in places, including the sword fight between Lloyd and the head maid, as well as the bath scene when he’s squirming to get out of her grip.

The World’s Most Moral Army ™

Published on April 3, 2024Leave a comment

As Yuval Abraham reveals in an article for 972+ Magazine, it turns out Israel deliberately targets ‘militants’ when they’re at home with their family:

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

Just deliberately murdering entire families because it’s easier:

“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

Oh and this is not an accident, this was explicitly authorised:

In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

But it’s blood libel to suggest Israel is committing genocide.