It’s grim up north

Tories, UK politics, video
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This Arte documentary looks at the impact Brexit has had on cities like Grimsby and Hull, but in the process makes it very clear that Brexit was just the final nail in the coffin after decades of neglect and decay.

It’s easy to be judgmental about somebody like Darren Kenyon, the fisherman featured here. How could he have been so stupid as to believe the lies told about Brexit? How could he have voted to cut his own throat? It’s easy and tempting to do so because it absolves everybody else. Your own fault, you shouldn’t have been so stupid as to trust the Tories. You made your bed, now lie in it. But the reality is that Darren’s company was in trouble long before he voted for Brexit, one of the few fishing companies left in a town that once had thousands. Through decisions made and policies created beyond his control, Darren and thousands like him, not just fishers were left to struggle. No wonder they went for Brexit when it was explicitly sold to them as the one thing that could take away all those obstacles. Somebody like Darren, who started work at 13, not “very educational” as he puts it himself, but who managed to create a small, thriving business with his own hands yet sees it threatened by forces beyond his control, was primed to believe the promises Brexit and Boris Johnson made.

As such Darren and all the other Brexit voters like them are the least culpable for this disaster. Their fault was to trust the media and politicians who lied to them. Decades of tabloid lies about the EU and politicians blaming everything bad on it, but who steal the credit for the good it brought set the stage for the referendum. Then the media, from the BBC on down failed completely to educate and inform, at best just parroting what both sides said with few attempts to actually determine the truth. And even in those rare cases where this was attempted, it once again was reduced to “experts say X but these politicians disagree, we’ll let you figure it out”.

Worse, once Brexit was a reality and the only issue in question was how damaging it was going to be, the media and the political establishment did its upmost best to make it as damaging and hardcore as possible, while sinking any chance of an alternative. It was deemed more important to keep a mild social democrat out of Number 10 then it was to make sure the country wasn’t entirely fucked over. Time and again chances to get a soft Brexit were missed and the end result was the clown show that was the 2019 election, where Boris Johnson was shitefested over the finish line by an united press and political establishment determined to see off the threat of Corbynism. That three years later it has ended with hyperinflation, a crumbling economy and a health service on the edge of collapse is the price they would pay all over again if asked.

On the remain side there’s this annoying tendency to blame Brexit for all of the UK’s woes, but at best it’s a catalysor of already existing trends. Back in 2001 I was doing leafletting in the then elections for the Socialist Alliance in Plymouth and getting to see some of its estates was shocking. A level of poverty I’d never seen in the Netherlands. Again, reading between the lines in this documentary it’s clear that the poverty and misery in places like Grimsby and Hull aren’t recent either, but have been present for decades. This is why people voted for Brexit because it promised to change things and people were desparate enough to take that gamble. We shouldn’t blame them for it.

An innocent fetish — Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku — Anime 2022 #18

Anime
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Watching Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku means you will see a lot of this sort of shot:

a toe nail is being clipped in the foreground while a girl enters the classroom in the background

Yes, this is an anime that knows what it likes and one thing it likes is feet. It’s not its only fetish, but it is its most obvious. In general Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku is obsessed with the ways in which its middle school characters move and act, an obsession taken straight from the source material, the manga by Hiro, which had whole chapters devoted to seeing a character dance. Anime of course has the advantage over manga of actually being able to show movement, but nevertheless the care and attention which it lavished on showing this movement is amazing. This is an anime that knows the appeal of its source material and knows it has to do justice to it. The character designs are spot on and lose none of their uniqueness in the translation from manga to anime, looking like no other slice of moe series. The sheer joy with which Hiro depicts Akebi moving and dancing has been captured perfectly. This isn’t fan service in the usual sense. The shot above may be fetishistic, but not sleazy. There’s a certain innocence to it, as I argued after viewing the first episode.

Consider the high light of that first episode, Akebi trying on her sailor outfit for the first time. There are elements to it that certainly are fetish coded, like her putting on her socks for example. But the overall scene is innocent and infused with the happiness she feels finally wearing the uniform she had waited so long for. There’s no feelings that this was drawn for somebody to get their rocks off to. It is indicative of the series as a whole, which always respects its characters even when (especially when) it focuses on them moving their bodies around. Much more than in many series, the characters act through their bodies as much as through their dialogue. You don’t need words to know what Akebi’s feeling in this scene. It’s this level of quality and attention to detail that made this my favourite series of Winter 2022, together with My Dress-Up Darling. It’s this that elevates it from a regular slice of moe series, when the story itself is as simple as “girls makes friends through the power of her sailor uniform”.

A girl in sailor uniform in a sea of blazers

That’s after all what Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku revolves around, as you might’ve guessed from the title. Akebi-chan has always been obsessed with sailor uniforms ever since her favourite pop idol wore one. That’s why she wanted to join her mother’s old middle school, not realising that the school had already moved on to blazers as its uniform until the opening ceremony. Fortunately for her and her mother’s efforts having made her uniform by hand, the kindly principal allows it as it is technically still the school’s uniform. It immediately makes her stand out in her class and the school, but it’s her personality and charm that really captivates her class mates. Throughout the series she functions as a catalyst, getting involved with a new friend every episode, getting to learn their stories. Week in week out it was a pleasure to see Akebi, who came from a primary school where she was the only pupil in her class, discover the fun in being in a class with your friends, getting to hang out with somebody else than your teacher or younger sister. I’d love to see a second season, if it can keep up the high quality.

Is this how Japan treats people with ADHD?

Comix, Manga
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This is almost a too on the nose example of Japan as an ultra conformist society. From Caitlin Moore’s review of How My Brain is Different:

One of the consequences of allowing people to speak in their own words is that there are stories where, even though we share the same condition, I struggle to understand the narrator’s perspective. Iku describes how it feels once the ADHD medication Strattera starts working. Her head feels clearer and she’s able to function professionally, but her emotions feel muted and she’s largely lost interest in most of her hobbies. Despite the disadvantages, she feels positive about her experience with Strattera.

During my brief attempt at taking Strattera, I had similar side effects, which to me put it squarely into “not worth it” territory. I hated the sensation of my passions and emotions being dampened. Horrified at the idea of living like that long term, I insisted on going back to stimulants.

Regardless of my own feelings on the matter, Iku’s experience and priorities are just as valid as mine. This could even be culturally informed; in Japan, Strattera is the first-line medication, with the only alternative being Concerta if the Strattera doesn’t work. All other forms of stimulant medication—Adderall, Ritalin, and Vyvanse, which are popular options in the US—are illegal.

If Japan forbids the use of medication that allows ADHD sufferers to keep more of their personality, while the main drug available is one that turns you into a functional but emotionalless drone, what does that say about the country?

You need to understand both languages — Martin’s increasingly petty translation rules

Anime, Art & Criticism, Lost in Translation
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That sounds obvious right? If you want to translate something, you need to understand what’s being said in the original language, then adapt it for the language you want to translate it in, making sure it still makes sense there and hopefully mean the same. More difficult then you might think. Here’s a good example, not taken from anime this time, but from the Danish version of Taskmaster, as presented by the official Taskmaster Youtube channel.

the Taskmaster asks: do you sometimes move down from the purple to the red field

This sentence makes no sense in English. Clearly there’s some Danish expression or saying being used here that’s been translated literally. From context you can sort of guess that it’s about Julie being angry and needing to calm down, but this whole exchange made no sense in the subtitles. I don’t even know if moving from the purple to the red field means she’s getting angrier or more calm. A clear translation failure where the translator didn’t realise this was some sort of expression and therefore didn’t get the meaning across in English. Had they understood this was an expression and understood what the expression meant, they could’ve either used an English equivalent, or chosen to just get its implied meaning across. But they didn’t, so they didn’t.

That’s why just being able to recognise words and sentences is not good enough. You need to understand the source language well enough to know what’s being said, but also what is meant by what’s being said. You then need to understand the target well enough to be able to get the meaning across in a way that both makes sense in it and is reasonably faithful to the original. If you lack the former, you get this mess. If you lack the latter, you get what you see in a lot of scanlations of manga and especially Korean manhwa or Chinese manhua, where the translator recognises the expression in the original but has no clue as to the equivalent in English, so translates it literally and plops down a translation note. (Occassionally you get somebody who does think of the equivalent in English and just plops that in the translation note.)

What you see with this translation of the Danish Taskmaster in general is something that’s just functional enough to have as Youtube subtitles, but that’s it. A pity because the series itself is hilarious, with a nice group of competitors and a great Taskmaster and assistant. If you like the original, you’ll like this one as well. Having those substandard subtitles however makes it just that little bit harder to enjoy.