I’m not a racist, but objectively speaking, Xandarians look weird when they’re eating.
Sword Story
I just finished watching Katanagatari. It’s about a pair of samurai with an odd couple relationship on a quest to collect twelve powerful swords from their equally powerful owners.
On the surface, one might think it sounds like Pokémon if Ash killed his opponents after taking their Pokémon in battle. However, the show avoids repetition in all sorts of clever ways. I mean, the third episode is about getting the sword from a shelter for battered women, while the episode after that is about a group of bad guys on a doomed mission to kidnap the protagonist’s sister (reminiscent of that issue of The Invisibles focusing on one of the jackbooted stormtroopers killed by the hero in an earlier story).
Based on the premise, one might also expect the show to be mostly focused on violence, but in reality perhaps 90 percent of each episode is taken up with nothing besides talking. Death and killing do take place, but the characters are so stylized that the violence is not gory. Perhaps the stylized aesthetics might put some people off, but if everything looked exactingly realistic then this show would be as bloody as a Sonny Chiba movie. If I had to summarize Katanagatari in one word, that word would be “surprising”.
The show surprises in small ways and large. In fact, everything is just slightly off. The background characters are straight from a samurai epic, while the ones with speaking lines mostly dress like cosplayers. Even the government of Japan is wrong. Everything about the show announces that it shouldn’t be taken as-is. There’s even an unexpected sci-fi twist and an episode examining the morality of revenge and violence before everything ends the way samurai stories always do – in an orgy of blood.
It should perhaps not be too surprising that the original light novel series the show was adapted from was written by Nisio Isin, who also wrote Bakemonogatari and the rest of that series. Of course, there’s an episode where the sentence “Don’t touch my woman” is uttered unironically, but there’s also a duel that resembles something from Samurai Jack so strongly that I have to wonder if it’s an homage or a result of parallel evolution of ideas. Everything in this show just looks incredible.
Anyway, apparently I like Nisio Isin’s stuff, which keeps attracting the right kind of people who end up making the exact type of anime that would appeal to me. I’m going to have to dig up the rest of his work.
God and my right
Many faux-medieval fantasy stories willfully ignore the overarching influence of the Church on European society. Knights were specifically said to be soldiers of Christendom and Christianity permeated every level of society, from the beggars who depended on handouts from the charitable orders to kings who had to be wary of excommunication. Medieval economics was also shaped by the Church, for it was considered impious for Chistians to charge interest on loans, which left moneylending as a Jewish profession. All these things and more made medieval Europe the way it was.
The Red Knight by Miles Cameron avoids this ahistorical presentation. It’s essentially set in a parallel universe Middle Ages where magic exists. Sorcerers require a license from the Church to practise magic, dragons rule over large parts of the land, and the forces of Satan threaten humanity everyday.
The world, you see, is divided in a war between God and Satan. However, the forces of Satan are actually just the forces of Nature fighting back against human encroachment. Having legitimate grievances, though, does not preclude moral excess, and the intelligent creatures of the wild massacre entire villages in their fight.
The author is a re-enactor and a history freak, which shows in the level of detail he displays in his fictionalized medieval England. Fencing masters teach moves for fighting monsters, rebellious peasants bide their time in the shadows, and despite the state of total war people come to accommodations with their supposed adversaries.
Anyway, I liked the book. Read it if you want more history in your fantasy.
Fear of a blank planet
I recently saw the series premieres of Terror in Resonance and Aldnoah Zero.
It’s hard to say much about Terror in Resonance since its first episode contained nothing but opaque hints at a story that could equally conceal either complexity or shallow-minded literalness. There are these two teenaged boys, they’re mysterious, they forcibly recruit a classmate being bullied. Props to Funimation for the crispness of the HD streaming. That’s it, that’s the episode.
Oh yeah, they blow up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which I mostly know from Digimon Tamers. Despite being a show with terrorist protagonists, the anime is very careful to show that no people were hurt in the attack. I suppose it’s so we can still root for the two heroes.
I dunno, terrorism is inherently a political act, the show better not end up spouting the rote cliches about justice and protecting your comrades that end up getting repeated over and over in anime. Though if the comrades aren’t nakama but are instead tovarishch and the two protagonists are actually part of some Baader-Meinhof communist uprising? That would be a pleasantly surprising twist.
And thinking about it further, it’s been a while since I’ve been wowed by an anime’s opening episode. They seem to be mostly slow burns. I think the last anime that I absolutely wanted to rave about after just one episode was Bakemonogatari.
Aldnoah Zero, however, at least manages to get to the fireworks factory. You see, human colonists of Mars, armed with superior alien technology, invade the Earth and bring the planet to its knees. Meanwhile, a plucky band of high school students use giant robots to defend their tiny part of the world. The anime is basically War of the Worlds with human invaders. In a later episode there’s even a boat full of refugees and a Martian war machine that Earth’s defenders have to hold off. I could almost hear Richard Burton narrating the last battle of HMS Thunder Child.
More deliciously, the tagline for the show is "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall". The self-serious connotations of using such a phrase – the Latin original is most widely misattributed as being quoted in the legal decision that found slavery insupportable in England – clashes so much with the subject matter that I immediately started laughing my ass off. Sweet crap, this looks like an awesome show to watch while drunk. This anime thinks it’s profound! Aldnoah Zero, your hubris is inspiring.
Old is new again
Somehow I’ve managed to get through life without ever seeing Groundhog Day. I never felt this lack until recently watching Edge of Tomorrow, the plot of which is similarly based on the protagonist reliving the same day over and over again.
I don’t believe Edge of Tomorrow is based at all on Groundhog Day, and in fact in reading the original book adapted for the film called All You Need is Kill (great title by the way), it’s clear that the repetitive nature of the story is based on the experience of dying over and over in a video game and not on any movie starring Bill Murray.
Still, comparisons were made, so out of curiosity I watched a movie that I’d avoided watching every time it was shown on TV – and I remember it was shown quite a lot.
Groundhog Day was okay. It’s pretty funny and enjoyable enough. Had I seen it when I was younger I might have enshrined it with nostalgia beside Home Alone, Ghostbusters, and Big. But that’s pretty much it. I think part of the reason for the regards it’s held in today is the fact that most people will have seen it multiple times over their lives. Nostalgia is built and rebuilt with each viewing.
But there are worse things to be nostalgic for. At least this thing is decent, unlike, say, Thundercats or He-Man or the like. Anyway, I can cross off another movie from my list.
Lens flare: the anime
Me watching the Original Video Animation TO Movie:
“There are a lot of lens flares in this anime.”
Five minutes later: “There really are a lot of lens flares.”
Five minutes more: “Good god, every light source has a lens flare. Did J.J. Abrams direct this?”
Star Trek + Facebook = Redshirt, the computer game
Remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that shifted focus from the high-ranking officers on the bridge to the entry-level schlubs doing the grunt work? Remember how those saps never knew what was going on half the time? Now imagine if those ensigns had Facebook.
This is the premise of Redshirt, the computer game. You create and roleplay one of the nameless crew members that die all the time on Star Trek (the so-called redshirts).
However, the game is not about meeting aliens and exploring space. It’s not even about cleaning toilets and fixing light bulbs, which are the only duties your fearless crew member is qualified for. It’s about playing the Facebook game.
There’s a disaster coming for your space station, you see, and your goal is to get promoted high enough to be evacuated along with the top brass (though the highest rank you can aspire to is the Commander’s Assistant). In the meantime, you have to schmooze with supervisors and keep your spirits up by hanging out with people on your friend list. Essentially the game is an RPG played through a Facebook simulator.
Thus are combined two obsessive activities: checking status updates on Facebook and grinding for incremental level gains on RPGs. I was up until 3 am playing this game and had to call in sick the next day due to sleep deprivation. It’s fun if you’re into Trek jokes and roleplaying, which yes, I am.
In conclusion, if you’re trying this game out for the first time, I recommend doing it on a weekend.
Plato, Buddha, and Jesus walk into a bar . . .
I’m reading 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights, a classic of Japanese science fiction by Ryu Mitsuse. It’s excellent. It’s one of those books that have so many big ideas, and happily it’s also one of those books that manages to do justice by those ideas.
Briefly, it’s about the universe, from the formation of the solar system to the heat death at the end of existence. In between, humans search for the cause of suffering and the solution to it. Humans like Plato, like the Buddha, like Jesus. They journey together and fight each other to find the righteous path and the better world of our dreams.
When reading this book I sometimes find myself agog at its breadth, its erudition, its cleverness, and its confidence. For example, when he is introduced, it’s revealed that Plato’s obsession with Atlantis is not some metaphor for the ideal state but a literal quest for antediluvian demigods. On the way he ends up debating philosophy with either a time traveller or an alien. This sounds very hokey in a postmodern reflexively ironic “pirates versus ninjas” mishmash, but somehow it’s earnestly un-ridiculous in context.
The book does presuppose a familiarity with the original texts it’s riffing on. You don’t need a degree in comparative theology, but knowing what Buddhist cosmological writings sound like helps in appreciating how deliciously inventive Buddha’s conversation with Brahma is, for instance. And having an ear for techno-babble does help, as well as some basic astronomy, though I understand the science in the book is out of date by now – not unexpected, for science has marched on since the book’s publication in the 60s.
Anyway, read it. I’m seriously enjoying this book. In a word, it’s mind-blowing.
Catchy titles for crappy anime
Servant Girl Annihilator: somehow not the title of a really shitty anime about a waif fighting grown men while wielding a giant cannon and flashing her panties every now and then.
On violence, on anime, and on violent anime
Most giant robot anime, and most anime in general, seem to be anti-war or anti-violence (barring the relentlessly capitalist shows like Mazinger-Z and Voltron which say nothing beyond “explosions are cool” and “buy our toys”). The shows that luxuriate in violence, like Black Lagoon, make clear that the characters are psychologically damaged in some way. The shounen fight series are either about making friends (like One Piece), are comedic (like Ranma 1/2), or have a stick up their ass and continually remind the viewer that the hero is only fighting reluctantly (like Bleach). I suppose the atomic bombings and the enforced postwar pacifism are ever present in the Japanese consciousness.
Though two series that glory in war and violence are the right wing wankathons Total Eclipse and High School of the Dead. One of the characters from the latter show even remarks, as he’s using a baseball bat to bust open a cash register, “You know, this is pretty awesome”. And he’s right, it would be goddamn sweet to be running wild in a zombie apocalypse with a Humvee full of guns and big-tittied girls in high school uniforms. Or being encased in a mechanical womb and using swords, cannons, and other phallic objects to unleash death and figurative semen on hordes of invading aliens.
Of course, there’s no such thing as zombies or alien invaders, which is to say that there are no faceless Others one can morally slaughter; thus, in anime, the depiction of violence simultaneously demands an apology for its use. But it seems that it takes a right-wing dickwad to not give a shit about such distinctions.