Twelve Days of Anime – Page 4

Kindred spirits under one roof: Himote House

Published on December 19, 2018Leave a comment

To be honest, it’s not hard to understand why Himote House hasn’t gotten a lot of buzz. A half length series about five girls with super powers living in a shared house in Tokyo, talking about everyday stuff, with thrash tier CGI animation does not for an appealing series make, right?

And yet it does have its charms, if you can look beyond the CGI animation. This is definitely a series to listen to rather than watch and it helps that the voice actresses have such good chemistry with each other. Something that’s especially apparant in the improvised parts of the show, which take place after the main episode, with several episodes being almost full improv. These bits feel like a real group of friends bullshitting, as they act out random scenarios chosen by the house cat (who talks, because this is anime). They’re actually funny too, which is not something you can say from many other improv anime.

Himote House: sitting around in face packs talking bullshit

It’s also surprisingly fresh to see anime girls sitting around with face packs and scruffy house wear and not have them be caricatures like the usual hard working hard drinking career woman slobs. It all feels more like how real women would live together than the stale stereotypes of other anime. It’s also reminds me a bit of this winter’s Takunomi, which was about four young women living together getting drunk. And speaking of real, episode seven got extra real when they played the Yuri Game of Life and the difference in treatment of gay people in Japan and Europe came up:

Himote House: Yuri Game of Life

You hold a happy marriage in a country where same-sex marriage is permitted by law vs You deliver a marriage form to the city, but you’re shut down by the both sexes clause of the Japanese constitution. That’s pretty real. Usually it’s all a bit more surreal though. So in one episode they play an indoor baseball game because baseball loving girls are supposed to be more popular but every play ends as an out because of obscure rules. In another they wake up in the living room together and have to find out what happened (with a lot of improv), in a third they use neo feng shui to rearrange the house furniture, and so on. The absolute highlight of this so far is episode nine but you need to see it unspoiled to have the full effect. The latest episode, eleven, has them go to a bath house for the obligatory fanservice episode, then spent their time discussing bitcoin & blockchain.

One last fun thing about the series is that the credits have the girls cosplaying characters from classic anime series; there are some real surprises in there and they’re not always easy to recognise either. What other series has Nanoha homages? All in all Himote House isn’t an essential series, but it’s far better than you’d assume and that little bit of social criticism thrown in is the cherry on the top.

This is the sixth post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: Frankenstein Family, an actual Chinese cartoon about, well, a monster family and what it means to be ‘normal’.

This zombie is trans and that’s NO coincidence

Published on December 18, 2018Leave a comment

Just in case you thought Lily coming out as trans in episode eight of Zombieland Saga was a coincidence or a Crunchyroll SJW conspiracy, we got this shot of her the very next episode, or do you think that’s coincidence too?

Zombieland Saga: Lily creates a rainbow

What pisses me off is that there are probably a lot of people who would still believe this rather than admit even Japan has LGBT people or animators clever enough to put together a visual pun like this. Which is a bit strange for people who profess to actually like anime, but this sort of double think is sadly common among the 4-chan crowd. Not uncommon outside it either and if you want to be depressed, take a look at the Zombieland Saga talk page at Wikipedia. Marvel how one stubborn wiki editor just refuses to believe all evidence and insist Lily isn’t trans. And there’s a lot of evidence, as Andrea Ritsu proved with her video:

It all shows that what looked like Lily coming as trans in episode was in fact Lily coming out as trans. What those who deny this are doing is actually what they usually accuse others off: projecting their own bigoted values on anime, desperate as they are for a form of entertainment not ‘spoiled by political correctness’ or whatever. It’s disappointing that this attitude is so prevalent in anime fandom, rather than being happy to finally see some positive trans representation. There was no need for Zombieland Saga to do this, but they did anyway and that means a lot. There have been a lot of could be trans characters in anime — most being the obligatory feminine boy who likes to dress as a girl — but few who actually stated they were trans. Having Lily as an out character, for whom being trans is part of her personality and not a gimmick is a step forward. Trying to deny it with dumb conspiracy theories does nobody any good.

All of this also proves a point I’m trying to make with this series of the 12 days of Anime: that a lot of the more interesting things in anime happen not in what we in the west think of as prestige or core anime series, but in series with less critical attention. Your slice of moe, your pretty boy series, the sort dismissed as trash, or only of interest to hardcore otaku or fujoshi. Here we have a series that nobody really expected anything off, an idol anime even and it has given me at least some of the most emotional stories of the season, if not the year. It’s not just Lily, but also Saki’s lesbian biker past or just having Yugiri as part of the cast, a former courtesan and therefore not likely to still be a virgin, which is a Big Thing for purity obsessed idol fans. Zombieland Saga now has gotten a bit of attention from western fandom, but there have been plenty of series this year which also deserved it but haven’t gotten it. Which is something I hope to remedy a bit with this series.

This is the fifth post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: Himote House, another underrated series of this season.

Slime versus Slayer

Published on December 17, 2018Leave a comment

This is going to be a tad unfair, as I’ve only watched the first episode of Goblin Slayer, but I think it’s still interesting to compare its worldview as shown in that first episode with that of Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken. Both after all are variations on the standard Japanese RPG inspired fantasy story and its trappings, but their politics are quite different. Whereas in the first goblins are depicted as mindless raping monsters, the second has them as people to protect and nurture.

Goblin Slayer: ethnic cleansing is okay

What I despised about Goblin Slayer was not just that it used rape as a cheap way to create drama in its first episode, but what that was in service off: ethnic cleansing. And it doesn’t matter that were talking about a fictional species here, because it draws on some very real world history. A race of insatiable rapists lusting after your women has been used against everybody from Black people in slavery America to Jews in Nazi Germany (and long before). The idea that the only way you can deal with that sort of people by violence and indiscrete murder? Also not new. Goblin Slayer justifies it by saying that this is just how goblins are, being all male they need to rape women of other species to reproduce, their innate nature being such they have no choice. But all that is just bollocks that the author made up to justify having a jolly old tale of genocide. We like that sort of thing in science fiction and the list of excuses we find to justify genocide is impressive; nothing gets an sf writer’s blood pumping faster. Just in case you thought Goblin Slayer was unique in this.

Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken

By contrast Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken does something much more interesting with its goblins. As with Slayer, goblins in the fantasy world it’s set in are some of the weakest monsters, always threatened by more powerful ones or humans. The only thing less impressive is a slime, but our protagonist slime is no ordinary slime, but a reincarnation of a virgin salaryman whose dying wish was for his friend to erase the porn on his computer. As per usual with this sort of story he gets a boat load of special powers and blatant cheats and he ends up taking the goblins under his wing as their protector. He becomes their ruler, evolves them by giving them names and helps upgrade their living situation. Other monsters too join him and his protection, with the main plot just having kicked in a few episodes ago as an invasion force of orcs is threatening to destroy everything.

It’s a much more positive portrayal than Goblin Slayer — even that evil horde of orcs is brain washed and under a magic spell, not inherently evil. Yet it’s still a colonial fantasy, of the White Man (well, Japanese Man in this case) coming to the aid of the noble suffering savages and teaching them the wonders of civilisation. Therefore, while it is more benign than Goblin Slayer, it’s still something not to watch uncritically. It’s still rooted in old habits and ideas, still a bit orientalist. It is possible to enjoy either of these series — and I certainly enjoy the slime anime — while being aware of these problems. It’s when you don’t notice it that there’s danger. For me personally the rape justifies genocide elements of Goblin Slayer are vile enough not to want to watch more, while with Slime-kun the white saviour parts are overshadowed by the sheer novelty of seeing several fantasy races work and live together in a way that rejects the social darwinist mindset of so many other fantasy stories.

This is the fourth post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: more trans zombies.

Marco Polo was the first weeb

Published on December 16, 2018Leave a comment

La Japonaise: a satirical painting by Claude Monet

As with a very many things we think are new, weeaboes have actually existed long before we had a name for them. As I’m sure you’ve learned at school at some point, when Columbus ‘discovered’ America he was actually looking for a quicker route to Asia; but even Columbus wasn’t the first weeb. That would’ve been Marco Polo, the first ever westerner who travelled to a far away exotic Asian country to come home and write books about it, the fourteenth century equivalent of the American college student going to teach English for a few years in Yokohama. More seriously, Europe and later America have always been fascinated by the ‘exotic’ Far East, have always sought there for something we don’t have ourselves and arguably anime fans are just the modern version of this.

And as with a lot of things, what we get from this more often than not depends on what we put in. Western fascination with the orient has always had an element of projection in it, imposing our own views of what it should be like, a mirror to reflect our own society back at us. Yesterday I argued that many of the critics of the new She-Ra series would’ve loved it had it been an anime, but why is that? Because of exactly this process of projection, of what Edward Said called Orientalism. Going looking for something in Japanese pop culture you cannot find in your own, only to get tangled up in your own prejudices and assumptions about Japan is the essence of weebdom. It explains why, even when Japanese creators e.g. explicitly state that yes, it was not a coincidence that Lily was a trans zombie, certain ‘fans’ still insist it was Crunchyroll wot did it. (More on that in a later post.) It’s an attitude far older than anime fandom, something satirised in Claude Monet’s La Japonaise (right) almost 11/2 centuries ago. (Said painting caused a bit of a ruckus about cultural appropriation a few years ago, when the Boston Museum of Fine Arts got people to dress up in a Japanese made replica of the garment in the picture and some Japanese Americans objected. More over at Metafilter).

To be clear, appreciating and seeking out Japanese culture isn’t a bad thing; anything that gets you to look outside your own borders is a good thing. Where it goes wrong is if you insist on painting your own assumptions and prejudices over it, to insist that your interpretation of Japanese culture is more correct than what actual Japanese people say. That’s the trap in which 4-chan culture and rightwing anime stans threw themselves into. They’ve build up this image of Japan as this naturally ultra conservative country free of everything they fear or hate and they ignore any evidence to the contrary. They want to escape feminism so they believe there are no feminists in Japan. They’re homophobic & transphobic so they reject anything that even hints at LGBT people existing in Japan too. Hence the conspiracy theories about the SJW mafia at Crunchyroll changing subtitles.

In a more benign way, I sometimes think most if not all of western anime fandom tends to misunderstand what is and isn’t important, glomming on to series and studios because they seem to pander to our tastes. Did Darling in the FranXX really deserve all the attention we spent on it earlier this year or did we assume it was important because it was a mecha series that ripped off Evangelion just enough? Is the disdain for moeblob shit actually justified or just a lazy assumption on our part that it’s all bad because it doesn’t suit our tastes? Aren’t we missing out on where some of the most interesting things in anime are happening because of our preconcieved notions? Does our idea of what makes for an important story actual make us miss what the truly important stories are?

This is, in a low key manner, what I’m trying to use the 12 Days of Anime for, by looking at those anime genres that are usually dismissed by mainstream criticism: your slice of moe, your kid shows, your pretty boys series. There’s a lot of things happening there but it’s hard to miss it when grim ‘n gritty schlock like Goblin Slayer is held up as important.

This is the third post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: lets look at Slime versus Slayer.

You would call She-Ra your waifu if she’d been an anime

Published on December 15, 2018Leave a comment

Is it a girl, is it a boy? No its another genderfluid checklist character. Those people in charge of the new she-ra realy must hate feminity. I saw not one character in this show that actually looks feminine. Yep thats representation

Let’s be honest. Half the neck beards whinging online about how the new She-Ra and the Princesses of Power destroyed their childhood would be having equally loud arguments about whether Adora, Catra or Entrapta was the “top waifu”. But because of who made it and where it was made, you got all this utterly fake “SJWs ruining television with their agenda driven entertainment. Like this jackass complaining about how Scorpia isn’t feminine enough. Buddy here would be drooling about wanting her to crush him between her thighs had she spoken Japanese.

Sport has a pretty dumb idea of what feminine means as well, but that’s as expected of rightwing man children upset somebody else is the target audience for a change. That picture is from episode eight, in which both She-Ra and her allies as well as her friend turned enemy Catra go to the Princess Prom and we spent quite some time with Catra and Scorpia getting the right outfit together, which ends with the latter in a dress and heels that actually look pretty good on her. We see the same with Adora and Glimmer on the other side and on the whole it’s a great little sequence of how to dress for your body type & personality. But pal here of course is disappointed he can’t wank to them, though he’d be the first to download the doujinshi had the series been made by A-1 Pictures rather than Dreamworks. All the while insisting that there’s no gay subtext in butch princesses twirling their frenemies around on the dance floor while enacting their nefarious plans.

She-Ra and Catra: pretty gay

To be fair, it’s pretty much text by now. Heck, there’s an explicitly lesbian couple turning up in the last two episodes.

Now She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is not actually an anime, but it is a magical girl show. I watched it in mid-November when for various reasons I was both unable to and a bit burned out on watching anime. Thanks to the rightwing crybaby crowd I actually knew about She-Ra and I blasted through it one Saturday when I wanted to watch something anime like but not actually anime, if that makes sense. This new series is the perfect reboot, taking the original plot and characters, extending them and giving them a depth and appeal the original never really had. Both the original She-Ra and He-Man were just glorified commercials after all, full with naff characters and not done all that well.

The new She-Ra is all about creating families, which makes it more interesting than the simplistic good versus evil take of the original. You got Adora finding out her whole life is a lie and needing to find a new home with the princesses, with Glitter and Bow having to get used to her and with finding more people to join their family to fight the Horde. That’s more or less a given in this sort of stories, but more impressive was seeing Catra, somebody who always knew what life in the Horde was like, creating her own family, with Scorpia and later Entrapta and even Shadow Weaver portrayed as having motherly feelings towards Adora and even Catra.

It’s this what reminds me most about Japanese series like Precure. There’s good and evil and it really would be bad if the Horde wins, but that doesn’t mean the people in the Horde are beyond redemption. Even the nameless goons are shown to be actual people with actual feelings, especially in episode nine, when Glimmer is held captive and wins the trust of one of the Horde soldiers. Said episode also shows that the heroes are not infallible, as in the rescue mission they have to abandon one of their own, who later switches sides. It’s the sort of thing that used to be rare in ‘western’ kid shows; it’s not necessarily a direct anime influence, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Really, this is such a cool and fun show I don’t understand the vinegar pissers who have to make it all political. Just shut up and watch and stop moaning about “having to see” lesbian couples. As if your porn isn’t full of it.

This is the second post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: Bring on the trash.