Wis[s]e Words – Page 51 – Ceci N'est pas Un Blog

Not even leaving language untouched

Published on February 7, 2022Leave a comment

This bit in Marco Roth’s review of several Russell Hoban novels hit a chord with me and made me scrabble in my bookcases for my own copy of Riddley Walker:

Unlike Tolkien’s Middle Earth and its logical Elvish languages, intended to provide an ordered universe for dualistic fantasies of good v. evil, Riddley Walker’s world is our own, warped to breaking point. The pleasure of puzzling over Hoban’s inventiveness is complicated by the horror of the novel’s premise. The hellish aftermath of nuclear winter isn’t funny, and every pun or chopped up bit of language is a trace of this, as well as a game for the reader.

Adam Roberts in his foreword to the 2012 SF Masterworks wrote about being sixteen in 1980 when reading Riddley Walker and “the pervasive, acute anxiety that nuclear war might break out any day”. I’m a decade younger than him and I also remember that fear growing up in the eighties, only receding in the latter half of the decade. It might not be a coincidence that this novel, though started the year of my birth, 1974, was only finished and published in 1980. Roth cuts at the heart of Riddley Walker with this paragraph: nuclear war as a disaster that not just destroys society, but language itself. It reminds me of Threads, which similarly argued that the real disaster of nuclear war wasn’t just the war itself, but the destruction of human culture in its aftermath. My own fears at the time were more primeval, as in just not wanting to die in a nuclear war. It’s only later that I understood that as the true horror of a nuclear war. The threat of the destruction of not just civilisation, but of humanity smashed back to the stone age, its history lost, unable to climb back on.

That’s the difference between Riddley Walker/Threads and most American nuclear holocaust fiction. By the eighties it was impossible to pretend here in Europe that a nuclear war could be survived, let alone won; there just isn’t any place to escape to if the bombs had started dropping. In America on the other hand, with its still massive wilderness, you could imagine surviving away from the cities, rebuilding something akin to civilisation. Whether that would’ve been true is another matter.

My anime winter 2022 watch

Published on February 6, 2022Leave a comment

New year, new season and with the latest Precure having debuted it’s the perfect time to list what I’m watching week to week this season. This won’t be all the anime I’ll watch from this season, just the ones I want to watch week by week. There are a bunch of others I want to watch, but not want to watch right now if you see what I mean. A lot of series I tend to like more binge watching them, while series I watch weekly are either mindless entertainment or the ones I can’t bring up the patience to wait for. The list below is listed in that order, inspired by how blogsuki does its season reviews.

Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki (2022)
Our protagonist in his school uniform on his throne looking at an empty room but for the knight standing in front of him
There are actual two series about ‘realistic’ royalty saving their respective kingdoms, both are far from good and this one is at the bottom of the list because the other one didn’t spent an entire episode in one sparsely furnished room negotiating a peace treaty. Int he first season last year an ordinary high school boy was summoned to a fantasy world to be the Hero against the inevitable Demon Lord, but was promptly made the king of the country that had summoned him when he turned out to be much smarter than its current king. He set about reforming it in supposedly realistic ways, but which did involve idols for some reason and had to deal with an invasion from a neighbouring country he handily beat. Now the empire — the most powerful of the human countries and shield against the demonic invasion — has turned up and demands he gives back the land he conquered. The negotiations about this form the plot of the first three episodes and are deadly dull. If you don’t enjoy people endlessly talking at each other about mindboggingly obvious problems, avoid.

Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu
The kingdom is so poor it cannot afford enough fabric to cover the breast of the assistant of the prince
The realistic prince in this series is not a Japanese import, but rather the genius crown prince ruling in place of his ill father. He doesn’t want to be the prince regent, but would as soon sell the country off to the highest bidder had it not been so poor. Worse, it’s caught between a bunch of larger, predatory nations to its west and the Empire to its east, which wants to conquer the entire continent, with geography conveniently making it so that only through his country the Empire can attack the west. So as our hero schemes to sell off his kingdom, he has to first solve its problems to make sure it can be sold at the right price, while being careful to not make it too powerful so that he’s forced to keep ruling it. Of course his own genius continues to hinder him in his goal, as he just keeps winning. He’s not just an asshole however, as he seems to be doing it to protect his assistant, who suffers from prejudice against her race of gorgeous albinos.

Shikkaku Mon no Saikyou Kenja
Best girl only shows up from episode 5
No royalty in this one, just the most powerful wizard of his age deliberately reincarnating himself in search of the ultimate magic, only to land in a future where that magic is seen as weak and the general level of civilisation is way below his own era. Whoops. I read the manga version of this and it’s hilarious how much the anime just drops or condensces to give it some momentum, entire arcs with dealt in an episode. This would be mindless popcorn at best but with the quality of anime, character design etc on display it barely reaches that. But I have high hopes for the dragon girl as shown above; she’s the best thing in the manga, all id no ego, punching and eating her way through the story in the background as the plot happens to other people.

Leadale no Daichi nite
our heroine walking on water
Confined to a hospital bed, not even able to eat or drink, our heroine’s sole pleasure is a VR fantasy game. One convenient power cut later and she’s inside the now real world of the game, but 200 years in its future. Vatly overpowered but looking like a teenage girl, she goes on a series of adventures as much as to enjoy her new freedom as to find out what happened. It’s all very pleasant and laidback. It tries to be funny at times but believes that you achieve this by having characters shout in shock at what she does, so it usually falls flat. What is hilarious is that the three most powerful figures in the kingdom turn out to be her adopted children. The show is mostly carried on the protagonist’s charms and is done competently enough to enhance that charm.

Kenja no Deshi o Nanoru Kenja
Enjoy Danblf as a dignified old man while it last
Yes, yet another by the numbers fantasy series, one in many ways worse than the ones we’ve already seen, but it’s this high on my list for a simple reason: it’s more interesting. Once again the protagonist is a player in a virtual reality fantasy game, who one day becomes trapped in the world of the game, now real. But whereas his character in game was a dignified old wizard, now he’s stuck in the body of a young girl, having used a gender changing item out of curiosity just before he got trapped. Also, it’s thirty years in the future. Reviews and viewers responses to this were brutal thanks to the bad CGI and animation, but for me it’s no worse than any of the other series we discussed. The quality of the animation is not the draw here: what’s keeping me interested is the plot and the characters.

Girls’ Frontline
M-14 firing an M-14
Based on the mobile gatcha game in which you collect assault guns, but they’re android girls, that was hugely popular in 2017-18? Not officially available in Europe at the time, so instead I started playing Azure Lane, which is sort of similar but with big titted WWII warships rather than big titted gun girls. Anyway, it’s after WWIII happened, there are good gun girls and bad ones who want to take over the world and therefore are depicted a bit more sexier. The colour palette is all a bit too brown equals realism for my tastes and the animation is a bit stiff, but it is a decent fun timewaster so far. Hopefully it can do a little bit more of character development as well.

Slow Loop
Koharu appreicates Hiyori's sashimi
Hiyori likes to fly fish, just like she did with her father before he passed away. One day she meets a strange girl while doing so, who tells her that she’s moving to Hiyori’s town soon as her father is remarrying and had never seen the ocean. The girl, Koharu, gets interested in what Hiyori is doing and together they catch a fish and make sashami of it. Later that evening, wouldn’t you know it but it turns out Koharu’s father is remarrying Hiyori’s mother and they’re now sisters. At heart this is a typical Manga Time Kirara slice of moe series. What gives it a bit of a bite is the relationship between Hiyori and Koharu and the grief and sadness both have to deal with. This is the first series on the list I would actually recommend to people unqualified.

Ryman’s Club
Mikoto playing a badminton match
So apparantly there’s still a flourishing work sport culture in Japan, where companies field their own teams and even hire promising athletes for them, with badminton especially being dependent on this sort of sponsoring. Shiratori Mikoto is one such badminton player, a teenage prodigy until a bad experience traumatised him. Fired from the company he was playing for, he gets a new start at a much smaller soft drinks company, where he’s actually expected to pull his weight as a sales person as well. Worse, he’s expected to play doubles badminton and that’s just what triggers his trauma. So far this looks like your typical underdog one cour sports anime, made different by not being set in high school for a change. I like Mikoto and the small cast of his fellow players, all a bit central casting for the moment, but the interactions between them are fun. Animation is gorgeous too, especially in the actual badminton scenes. Even in screenshots you can see the sheer physicality of it.

Delicious Party Precure
Nagomi Yui enjoying eating an onigiri
February means a new Precure season and this time it’s themed around food and the happiness it brings. The bad guys interestingly are a troupe of phantom thieves, trying to capture the food fairies that make food taste good and store them in an evil recipe book. Our pink Precure lead is Nagomi Yui, one of those ultra athletic energetic types who helps out the football club but is far too interested in onigiri to join. The meet cute with her mascot character this time happens when she saves a baby from rolling down a hill in their carriage. There’s a non gender conforming helper character called Rosemary, a slightly obnoxious male childhood friend who judging from the opening may become a Tuxedo Mask type character and there will probably be three Precures, again judging from the opening. It all looks good but I’m always a bit wary of having boys in Precure series as it tend to be the worse ones (Happiness Charge).

Sasaki to Miyano
Sasaki lookign skeptical at an enthusiastic Miyano
Best romance this season is a gay one between a short fudanshi and his tall, red haired yankee senpai. Fundanshi are boys who like to read Boys Love manga, which, well, are about boys who fall in love with other boys. It’s always complicated in how gay these sort of series actually are, with the usual excuse given that the protagonist isn’t actually gay, he just loves this particular person so much. Miyano, the fudanshi, likewise doesn’t believe he is gay, he just likes the genre. Sasaki, his senpai, doesn’t know anything but that something in Miyano attracts him and he wants to do something. This is the sort of romance where the building up to both people realising and admitting their attraction to each other, let alone getting together, may take the entire series. But it works here. Despite there being no open prejudice so far in the series, it makes sense that a teenage boy would struggle with the realisation that they may be gay. For the most part it’s Sasaki that’s the most accepting of his new found attraction to Miyano, while the latter is more in denial. Animation wise this is one of the better looking series this season, even if there’s little opportunity for it to go full out like the next series could.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2

Forget all the other fantasy series on this list. If you want to watch one generic gatcha game based fantasy series this season, watch this. Because this is the one with the Cygames money behind it. Just look at this scene from episode 4. Princess Connect is a gatcha game in which you collect teams of princesses to do something, but the anime series is about the player character dropped into the world with amnesia, being in a guild with three girls, which specialises in finding new culinary discoveries. It’s all light hearted and fun and never takes itself too seriously, while still occasionally upping the threat levels when necessary. it’s such a relief each week to watch an anime in which every scene looks good and the animators can still top that already level of excellence when they want to. A very comfy sort of anime.

Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku
Akebi-chan meets her first friend
This on the other hand is a series which makes some people feel very uncomfortable as it is so fetishistic. Akebi-chan wants to go to the same middle school her mother went to, to be able to wear a sailor uniform as that’s what her favourite idol wears. She grew up in the sticks and in primary school was always the only person in her class. Turns out the school now uses blazers, but she’s still allowed to wear her sailor outfit. What is a heartwarming story of Akebi learning about and getting along with her class mates is somewhat undermined by the almost voyeuristic way it’s all been animated. There’s a lot of detail in how Akebi moves, how her clothes respond to that movement, how her hair behaves, etc., and some of that seem decidingly sexual in nature. It doesn’t bother me to be honest, it just doesn’t feel sexualised to me, both in intent or execution even though it is fetishistic in its obsession with movement and clothing. Your mileage may vary.

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi o Suru

Finally, the best series this season, in which earnest, serious lover of traditional Japanese dolls Gojou gets involved with bubbly, outgoing gyaru Marin, when the latter asks him to help her designing and creating her cosplay outfit after she finds him using the sowing machines at school. I already knew and loved the manga this is based on, both for its story and its artwork, so was looking forward to this adaptation. It hasn’t disappointed me. The animation and character designs are on point and each week it’s a treat watching it. This is one of those romances that never quite becomes a romance, even as Gojou and Marin grow closer, but it’s enjoyable just seeing them grown in their friendship and character. Gojou especially starts off as a stiff dork and with Marin being so open and outgoing he keeps getting into those stock anime situations in which she’s half naked for innocent reasons like needing to be measured for her outfit and he’s panicking. It’s so refreshing to see him get tired of his reactions and attempting to overcome them. Everybody on this series seem to give 110% on it and that dedication is noticable in its quality. Even slower episodes, like episode 3, in which they go shopping for cosplay material, look stunning.

Line goes up…

Published on February 5, 2022Leave a comment

If you wanted to know about NFTs, where they came from, what they’re being used for and especially why they are harmful but were afraid to ask, this is the video for you.

At almost two and a half hours it’s a long sit, but that’s because Dan Olson takes the time to set the context in which NFTs arouse. To understand NFTs you have to understand Bitcoin and all the other electronic currencies that were inspired by it, not to mention the dreaded blockchain and the whole spectre of ‘web3’ technology. As important, Olson understand that just knowing the technological context isn’t enough and therefore starts with the real driving force behind Bitcoin and NFTs: the 2008 recession.

Because in 2008 the world economy crashed and while it may superfically look like the world has recovered since, the truth is it wrecked the opportunities of an entire generation. The idea that if you get the right education, go on to get a good job you can have a good, stable career the way your parents could in the sixties had been undermined for decades of course, but the 2008 recession made it official. The ladder had been pulled up and the normal ways of bettering yourself are no longer available. Even people lucky enough to graduate and start a middle class career are finding life precarious; you may be temporarily affluent but are you secure the way your parents were secure in their careers? And it’s not just careers that are insecure: something as basic as owning your own house is increasingly out of reach of all but the most upper of middle class people. Be it London, new York or Amsterdam, it’s hard to find a house when investors routinely overbid you. The average housing price here in Amsterdam is now 10,000 euros/square metre, which means my own appartment of 48 square metres is worth half a million euros. It’s absurd.

All of which means is that life is as unstable as it has ever been since the 1930ties for the vast majority of people even in rich countries, the gap between the rich and the rest of us as great as it ever has been while ever attempt to level this gap has been smashed. We’ve seen how the establishment in the UK reacted when Jeremy Corbyn almost won the 2017 elections, which led to the Labour right smashing their own party while the entire press conspired to put Johnson in Number 10. When regular politics are no longer allowed and regular ways to have a stable career and life are equally smashed, that leads to people looking for alternatives. In politics, this lead to Trump and Brexit. Similarly, if people cannot get rich conventionally, they’ll seek out other ways of doing so. There’s a huge market of precarious, affluent middle class people ripe for exploitation.

Which brings me to Albania. A former ‘protectorate’ of fascist Italy, after liberation at the end of the Second World War it became a communist dictatorship ruled by Enver Hoxha. Hoxha was a Stalinist so orthodox that he broke with the Warsaw Pact for being too soft. Under his leadership Albania was so closed a country it made North Korea seem positively welcoming. The collapse of communism all over Eastern Europe also reached Albania and in the early nineties it became a normal democratic, capitalist state. Now if you know your recent European history, you know that all these countries that had lived under communism for almost half a century were incredibly vulnerable to capitalist exploitation and were plundered on an unprecedented scale by their own ex-communist elites and western advicers. Albania was worse than most and its economy became dominated by pyramid and ponzi schemes, with millions of people investing their savings in them. When it all collapsed in 1997 it led to civil war.

As Dan Olson argues here, all electronic currencies are pyramid schemes, people buying them to sell to a bigger fool and NFTs even more so. There’s a ready made market for them, of those precarious middle class, usually tech adjecent people who want to find a way to get rich or die trying. Which is worrying. It’s not just the godawful realities of bitcoin and NFTs, it’s that once it all burst, once all these people, already primed by Trump and Qanon, lose their shit, they’ll lose their shit and what will that mean for America?

Get in the Robot Kazuki: Soukyuu no Fafner — Anime 2022 #007

Published on January 30, 2022Leave a comment

Stop me is this sounds familiar. Kazuki is a high school boy on Tatsumiyajima, a small Japanese possession somewhere in the Pacific. Life is peaceful but a bit boring on an island where everybody knows everybody. That is until — just as his childhood friend Soshi has returned from a trip to Tokyo — the island comes under attack from enigmatic aliens called Festum. Turns out the peaceful world Kazuki and his friends knew is a lie, most of the world has been overrun by the Festum and now Kazuki has to pilot the only thing that can defeat them: the Fafner mecha. Mysterious all powerful alien monsters that cannot be reasoned with, giant robots as the only way to defeat them and reluctant child soldiers drafted into a secret war as part of a worldspanning conspiracy their parents are involved in. Yes, Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Agressor does own a lot to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Not just plot wise, thematically too, with its innocent teens being dragged into the conspiracy filled adult world where nothing is what it seems, accompanied by lashings and lashings of angst.

Soukyuu no Fafner was a hard series to like. First aired in 2004, it’s smack in the middle of anime’s ugliest period. Anime was transitioning from traditional, physical cell based animation towards computer based cell animation, which led to a general loss of quality across the industry in my view that only improved once the animators got to grip with the new technology. Fafner also features the then current trends in character design, which again I find some of the ugliest to have existed in anime. Combine that with the ‘brown equals realism” colour palette trendy at the time and you get a series that isn’t that visually appealing to look at. This may explain why it took me three tries to finish this series. I first started watching this in 2016 and got to episode 11 before abandoning it. Retried two years ago and got to episode 14. Finally on the third try I decided to restart where I left off and binged the last eleven episodes in a day.

Sometimes you have these sort of series. It takes a couple of times for it to click; ironically I had the same issue with Evangelion. In Soukyuu no Fafner‘s case once I persisted I rather liked it, the second half especially once the true scope of the story was revealed mand some of the Evangelion influences dissappated. I wouldn’t call it a classic but I understand why it became somewhat of a cult favourite. There would a television special prequel in 2005, a movie in 2010, another tv series in 2014 and a series of movies only last year; it has a following at least. Not sure if I’m eager to see any of these follow ups, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching this either.

The sheer hypocrisy

Published on January 15, 2022Leave a comment

You can’t help but sympathise with the guy being interviewed here, a funeral officer who at the height of the Covid pandemic had had to stop people from saying their last farewells, now feeling a fool for having done so when the government that set the rules never had any intent to obey them themselves

What sticks in the craw is that’s James O’Brien he’s talking to, who with his employer LBC was one of the people responsible for destroying the one credible alternative to a Johnson led Tory government back in 2019. What sticks in the craw is that all of the press currently falling over themselves to explain what a bad ‘un Boris Johnson is and who could’ve guessed, could’ve told us that in 2019 but refused to. What sticks in the craw is the pretence that having an office party is what made Johnson bad, that the failed and utterly corrupt covid strategy of the government as a whole isn’t an issue. That for the second time in a decade the Tories are responsible for mass deaths amongst the most vulnerable, first through austerity, second through herd immunity is ignored or outright denied even. But the chance at taking down a prime minister who has become an embarassment without doing damage to the larger Tory project by using this trivial issue has the same people who championed him two years ago chomping at the bit.

First Cameron, then May, now Johnson. The media install Tory prime ministers to do their dirty jobs, then discards them when no longer needed, but never questions the legitimacy of the Tories as a whole. That fate is left for anything that challenges the established order. Tell me, if democracy means that the press is allowed to ruthlessly monster anybody they take a dislike to, that only those candidates and parties acceptable to it are allowed anywhere near power and that allowance can be withdrawn at any time, how much of a democracy is the United Kingdom still?