Category: Media

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What am I watching in Winter 2016?

I originally posted this over in the podcast group blog. I rather like having everything I write in one spot, so now I’m reposting it here. I picked two shows to talk about out of the assload that I’m currently watching.

Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi posing with lightsabers while clone troopers shoot their guns in the foreground.

Non-anime: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Thanks to The Force Awakens and the damn Galaxy of Heroes mobile game that I got hooked into, I’ve grown interested in the only bit of modern Star Wars that I haven’t watched. These are actually two different series – one is a 2003 show animated in a more traditional style while the other is a 2008 CGI spectacle. The 2003 version was helmed by Genndy Tartakovsky, he of Samurai Jack fame, and it’s just as excellent as his previous work. It’s a largely wordless action show which reduces a massive interstellar civil war into a series of intense duels across different planets. In style it’s basically a samurai epic in space, which should be unsurprising considering what Samurai Jack was like. Both Samurai Jack and the anime Katanagatari felt very similar to me, probably because they both take a lot of their cues from the chanbara genre (i.e., samurai movies). So I must recommend the Tartakovsky Clone Wars as an action and a samurai fan. Plus it changes General Grievous from the ridiculous robot with emphysema that he was in Revenge of the Sith and turns him into a genuinely terrifying enemy.

The 2008 Clone Wars changes things up quite a bit. It explores a lot more of the titular conflict, but in style it’s much more of a kids’ show. General Grievous has become a cartoonish bad guy who keeps getting beaten by the heroes every week like the villain from an 80’s Saturday morning show. At points I half expected him to shout “I’ll get you next time, Gadget!” like Dr. Claw at the end of every episode of Inspector Gadget. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation, as I realize that this iteration has a different target audience than the previous one (being on Cartoon Network I assume the Tartakovsky show was aimed at hipster animation aficionados).

Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice Ahsoka is the spunky Young Adult heroine one would expect from this sort of bildungsroman, and while I’ve only just finished the first season I expect the rest of the show to build up to her becoming a full-fledged Jedi. But even as a kids’ show this series can get pretty dark and depicts actual characters dying, which I appreciate in that it doesn’t try to keep kids in a metaphorical hamster ball separated from the real world consequences of violence and conflict. Though there’s really quite a lot of fighting in this show. I mean, do people in Star Wars ever just watch Netflix and chill? I know what regular people on Star Trek do to relax, but I have very little idea what it’s like to not be a general or a mystic space knight on Star Wars.

Still, an interesting thing to ponder is that for most 21st century kids, this is their Star Wars. It’s not the original trilogy, it’s not even the prequels, it’s this CGI show that’ll be the first thing that comes to mind when the words “Star Wars” come up. It’s at least a lot better than the prequels, and it’s a pleasantly entertaining show to relax with, so I’m going to stick with my Star Wars viewing project. Possibly I’ll move on to Rebels once I finish.

Anime: Schwarzesmarken

This is just an enjoyably dumb show to bitch about if you’re into giant robots and military porn, which I am. I also have a fascination with both alternate history and the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War. The show is stupid but in a creatively-nourishing way – whenever I’m watching I’m either imagining German pop music playing in the background or mentally composing a rant about how remarkably off-base its understanding of history and international politics is. That’s when I’m not criticizing it for its right-wing politics and historical revisionism. God, this anime is shit. But I can’t stop watching it.

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This Ain’t the Left Hand of Darkness

You know, I like Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. It’s about a bunch of amnesiac Japanese youths dropped into a fantasy world and forced to kill monsters to survive. Yeah, it’s like the hundredth variation on the “trapped in an RPG world” subgenre, except this one isn’t a power fantasy about the uber-l33t players replacing their pathetic offline lives with an awesome new virtual existence. No, this one actually examines what it would be like to have to kill another living being for the first time or lose a close companion or any one of a number of video game experiences that would be traumatic in real life. In other words, it treats the RPG world experience like a war movie.

I like the show, but it ain’t perfect. I’d say the worst thing about this anime is that every week I forget Ranta is an awful human being and every week he reminds me of that very fact. I’ve never liked fanservice – if I want porn I can get porn, anime studios – but I’d take a gratuitous shot of Yume’s naked asscrack every week (and holy shit was that ever gratuitous) over yet another tired line about how Ranta’s female teammates only have worth if he finds them sexually attractive. He could at least vary up his misogyny and insult women for having a different waist to hip ratio than men or having slightly higher pain thresholds or whatever. You know, really open up new horizons of animated sexism.

This is probably the thousandth time I’ve heard the joke that goes “you have small breasts, therefore you are worthless” on various anime series. Even if I thought that joke was funny, I certainly wouldn’t think so after hearing it repeated in one form or another since the 90’s – which is probably the last time someone laughed at that joke, by the way. You know, because it was already old and the person hearing it couldn’t believe someone was still using that joke.

I complain because I actually do like Grimgar. This Ranta thing is like a mouse turd in a bag of chocolate chips. I realize that the light novel author has mental health issues and might not be aware how jokes work (for instance, that they should be funny), but that doesn’t make this part of the show suck less.

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Lost in Japan

Remember Kappa Mikey? It was about an American cartoon character moving to Japan to work in the anime industry. It made really obvious jokes about Japan and anime, so it wasn’t exactly good. However, the unequivocally great thing about it was the catchy theme song from Beat Crusaders.

Uh, remember Beat Crusaders? They broke up in 2010.

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The Commissar’s in Town

I kind of liked Total Eclipse, once I’d gotten over the gratuitous fanservice boobery, so of course I’m checking out the prequel series Schwarzesmarken. There’s definitely something worthwhile in this alternate history story of East Germany being invaded by aliens in the 1980s. I did also like Deutschland 83, after all.

However, let me call your attention to the introductory graphic explaining the Cold War to the viewers:

Cold War map of the world showing Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea as not being in the US camp

If you’ll notice, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are very clearly not in the American sphere of influence on that map. Is this a stealth resurrection of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Yes, it is. In this alternate history, Japan also lost the Second World War, but it kept its imperial regime and some of its territory. Of course, such a thing is utter bullshit. If Germany was beaten so badly that it was partitioned, then there was no way Japan would have gotten a negotiated peace. I’d originally assumed Article whatever of Japan’s pacifist constitution had been repealed in light of the alien invasion, not that pigs had been flying.

The type of Japanese military geek who would write a story set in East Germany is also the type of mildly right-wing jerk-off who views the Japanese Empire with nationalistic nostalgia. I mean, it’s at least entertaining, so it’s automatically better than GATE: Thus the JSDF Fought There.

Setting that aside, since this is an anime about East Germany fighting aliens in the 80’s. I of course had to make a fanvideo scored to Der Kommissar. What else was I going to do? I had to stick the video behind a password-protected Vimeo thing because of the zealousness of copyright protectors. It’s released under the auspices of that anime podcast I’m in.

Anyway, this music video is dedicated to those unsung heroes of the alien war – the Stasi. Password is “bundeswehr”.

Show those greedy capitalists what we think of their copyright regime, kameraden!

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The boy who quantum leaped through time

I’ve been watching way less anime lately. Of the handful of shows I’m watching this season, I’d say Erased is the best. It’s got a pretty cool opening, as is to be expected of Asian Kung-Fu Generation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9G20wV0KHE

Erased is about a 29 year old pizza delivery man who has the involuntary ability to go back in time to fix tragedies. Normally he only returns for a few minutes but when something really bad happens he ends up as a 10 year old boy again living the weeks before one of his classmates was abducted and killed.

There seems to be a lot of stories lately about pathetic single men in their twenties returning to their childhood to fix their lives. It’s obviously a wish-fulfillment fantasy – if you look at the biographies of the writers, the ones who don’t have agoraphobia or social anxiety are horrifically underemployed Millenials. This desire to return to a simpler time and set right what first went wrong is the desire of a person who feels like a grownup loser.

It’s a specifically male story, as women are pretty much raised from birth to expect to play second fiddle in their own lives. The traditional route of female adulthood is of subordination to others, after all, to future husbands and to children that must be raised. Offhand, I can only think of one female lead who time leaps back, in the manga Again!! In that case she was just inadvertently brought along when the male protagonist got a chance to fix his high school shit, and otherwise didn’t want to time travel in the first place.

Of course, the writers of stories that get adapted into anime clearly aren’t doing too badly. But the stories couldn’t have gotten so popular if their audiences weren’t finding in them something to relate to. This type of story could only have been written in an economic climate where the young can expect to be underpaid and underappreciated for not being born in better times. It’s the basic story of the 21st century so far. Kind of a depressing thought, isn’t it?

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The Near-Final Frontier

I’ve been playing Star Trek Timelines, the new mobile F2P game that’s only been out for a few days. I never play these types of games, but I’ve read about them and I’m aware of all the little psychological tricks it’s using to hook me in. But on the other hand, when I click on Worf he says “Today is a good day to die.” Plus, if I keep playing I’ll get to unlock Odo and Chakotay soon. How am I supposed to resist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7idyOAqYZlI

The premise is what you’d expect – some time-space hooey is afoot and Q has dragooned you, nameless Starfleet captain, into flying around fixing the problems when past, present, and alternate timelines collide.

The game’s only been out for a few days, though, so some of the kinks are apparently still being ironed out. For instance, I think the beginning is a bit too complicated to just jump into – Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is noticeably slicker (speaking of another mobile F2P game that I just got into over the holidays) – but zooming around in a Constitution-class starship scanning planets is fun enough by itself.

It’s curious that so far I’ve yet to find a characters from the Bakula Enterprise that’s been voiced, considering that characters from the other series have had voices. Not all of them (Yeoman Rand and Keiko are mute, for instance), but enough that I notice. Perhaps there’s something in the Enterprise actors’ contracts that puts a kibosh on video game adaptations? I do notice that the J.J. Abrams movie versions aren’t included, which I assume is because the game’s contract covers only the TV shows.

Anyway, I’m probably going to keep playing this grindy clickfest until I vomit. It’s Star Trek, how could I not?

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A People’s History of Middle-Earth

I finished reading The Last Ringbearer. It’s a story completely unapproved of by the Tolkien estate which tells the story of the end and aftermath of the Lord of the Rings trilogy from the viewpoint of the orcs. It’s pretty much only available through non-standard channels in English, though I understand it’s sold openly as a published book in its original Russian.

I quite liked the opening when it was a revisionist retelling from the perspective of the losing side, leavened by long digressions into the history of Mordor and the ecology of the land, but in the middle it turned into a standard fantasy quest, which I wasn’t into. It’s clearly deliberate parallelism to the One Ring mission. After that it turned into a Cold War spy novel before ending kind of ploinkingly with almost the same climax as the original trilogy.

Reading the book was an interesting experience. I’m not sure it’s something I can recommend, particularly since I don’t know who I could even recommend it to – the story keeps switching genres and I don’t know if a typical fantasy reader would appreciate this literary legerdemain. That, and a Tolkien fan would probably be really ticked off at how the story of Lord of the Rings has been cruelly hacked apart and sewn back together as a cynical propaganda piece by the victorious West.

The book ends with an essay from the author defending his fanfiction – I do not use this term pejoratively, but it really is the best term for this work – and criticizing the fantasy genre’s demand for Manichean struggles between good and evil. This leads me to believe that he may not be widely read in the modern fantasy genre. There are numerous English fantasy works that put a gritty spin on fantasy, the most famous probably being A Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones in its TV incarnation). Those works may not be as widely known in Russia, but it seems such an obvious idea to put a cynical spin on fantasy that I’m sure there are Russian writers who are doing the same thing already.

Anyway, that’s that. I read The Last Ringbearer. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like it. I just thought it was kind of okay.

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December anime

So Comet Lucifer is pleasantly brainless watching. No fanservice either, which is unlike Asterisk War and Heavy Object, which are also brainless but otherwise force the viewer to participate in ogling female bodies. I can’t believe the latter show expects me to drool over a girl who looks 12 years old.

As for Asterisk War, I keep getting distracted by the awful costume design. I mean, a lot of mediocre anime has shitty costuming so it’s kind of like wallpaper for me at this point, but every now and then I come across something like this dress:

Julis in a godawful white and yellow dress

Bleargggh, white and yellow? And that frilly boob thing? From the main character’s reaction I was supposed to think the girl looked fetching, but seriously, nothing about that dress is flattering to her figure. It’s about even with a potato sack in terms of being alluring.

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Future Imperfect

I love point-and-click adventure games. I love walking around their worlds and clicking “look” on each piece of background scenery, I love talking to every character I come across, and I even love obtuse inventory puzzles that leave me wondering how the hell a rubber ducky is supposed to help me get on a subway train. This is not a rational love but one born from the nostalgia of a person who played a lot of Sierra adventure games as a kid.

But art does not exist in a vacuum. Audiences always bring their prior experiences with them when encountering a text. Keeping in mind my partiality toward its genre, I must say this: I like Technobabylon.

Mohawked bouncer with the mohawk: The arm's great, but the eyes they gave me ain't worth shit.

Part police procedural, part conspiracy thriller, and wholly a sci-fi cyberpunk journey through a decadent city of sorrow and sin, Technobabylon is a pleasant return to the old adventure and puzzle gaming formula. You play as three main characters: a curmudgeonly police detective hostile to the newfangled AI that governs his city (like a white Bill Cosby, minus the rape), his younger and more enthusiastic post-op (actually post-genetic-engineering) female-to-male partner who’s down with the hacking and the tweeting and the bipping and the bopping, and an unemployed shut-in on welfare addicted to the Internet who subsists on protein sludge extruded from her shitty apartment’s food machine. Also there’s a murderous plot which could lead all the way to the top.

Continue reading “Future Imperfect”
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It’s a hell of a town

I finally saw the last two episodes of Blood Blockade Battlefront (a.k.a. Kekkai Sensen). The show is set in a near future New York that has become a gateway to a world of monsters and magic.

It’s like Hellboy as an anime, in that it’s interesting but overstuffed. I like the aesthetics but the story and the setting feels kind of like having a shotgun full of supernatural premises blasted at you. That, or it could be likened to hearing the story from Homer Simpson, or maybe Ralph Wiggum. “And then she made a truck come to life and eat other trucks! Did I mention she was a vampire? Well, she was. Also, there are 13 master vampires, but it turns out there are more, and there’s blood superpowers, and the psychic twins made the disaster happen I think. What was I talking about again?”