Rich and Strange Aeons

I found I can watch it via Amazon Prime. Re-watch time! A lot of plot I don't recall details of, and a lot of stuff that seems strikingly familiar for having seen it once years ago. The real question is whether it'll make more *sense* now.

As usual when visiting S, I get exposed to movies.

* Moonlight. Emotionally powerful, but kind of unpleasant for me. Would probably not watch again.

* Castle in the Sky: I've seen this at least three times, 2007, 2014, and now. I keep liking the movie, but checking my notes, I keep forgetting what I observe about it, like how its a visual melange of motifs from other Ghibli movies, or the fact that the dubbed cast includes Rogue and Dawson Leery. (That it includes Luke Skywalker I do remember.) Has a good dub... I'm not 100% sure if I've actually watched it in Japanese, though I probably did in 2007.

* The Tale of Princess Kaguya: I've wanted to see this for a while, and finally did! Beautiful and sad. Different visual style from the usual Ghibli. Decent dub.

Castle notes over the years:

2007:
It's Gort! Who attacks Gort? Oh, secret heirs... visual melange of
Cagliostro and Nausicaa in one scene.
Behind the Microphone: James van der Beek (Dawson) as Pazu. Mark Hamill
(Luke) as Muska. Anna Paquin as Lucita. Now to compare Laputa and
X-Men directly and see if her voice changes.

2014:
movie: Castle in the Sky (re) big hit. scary for M.
I noted it's kind of a theme or motif mashup of Nausicaa, Cagliostro,
and Spirited Away. The princess and evil relative from Cagliostro, the
nature and God Monsters of Nausicaa, the engineer guy from Spirited Away...
her pigtails get shot off, making Sheeta look more like the standard heroine
not just Mark Hamill. Anna Paquin as Sheeta(!), James Van Der Beek as
Pazu, Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya as Louis?). I don't known Cloris
Leachman as Dola, but others do, and long career

2017:
M got excited and squirmy a lot.
engineer in Castle reminds me of stoker in Spirited.
Ponzu dad's drawing looked like long haired Mushka.
crystal scene like spirits in Mononoke
pink skull pirates.
pink pants
I wondered if they wear the same clothes, she actually changes a lot. four outfits.
flooded city like Cagliostro
inscription like cuneiform
squirrel things like Nausicaa
Egyptian art style on Laputa
700 years gap
robot like god warrior.
sodom, Indra's arrow.
progress, can't stay hidden
shoots her pigtails off

The OP of the anime Sora no Woto is really really pretty. It's also kind of disturbing: the show is about these girl soldiers, fairly active and all, but the OP has them mostly with closed eyes and often in somewhat sexualized poses. Very passive and objectified.

I just found something about that: apparently the art is heavily inspired by Gustav Klimt's paintings, especially the Beethoven Frieze. Which sounds vaguely thematic. The style is similar and you can match up most of the poses; the Sora girls are at least wearing clothes.

This doesn't explain why this choice was made, nor necessarily excuse it... but it is interesting context.



Link to an image if you don't see one: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/soranowoto/images/d/d4/OP6.png/revision/latest?cb=20130221213305

I have since finished the Akagami anime, and almost all of the manga.

* Kiki and Mitsuhide, Prince Zen's first two guards/attendants, who used -dono on each other until they asked each other to stop, are in fact noble. Shirayuki uses -san with them even in private, contrary to my guess last time. They don't use an honorific with her or Zen, Zen and S don't use honorifics with each other (in private; his attendants qualify as private.)

* Obi, the definitely non-noble ninja, got promoted all the way to "Obi-sama" by a palace servant in Tanbarun. In the same scene, underage royalty call him Obi-san. That's not surprising given the relative ranks, but I note it.

* Those royal kids get "omae-tachi", or "you two" from their older and very annoyed brother. "omae" is a pretty casual/rude way of saying "you", like "hey you" -- Mitsuhide uses it on Obi a lot. One of the kids uses "nii-sama" for that brother, which is like "Exalted Big Brother". The kids also say Shirayuki-san, when their older brother, the first prince of their country, is saying Shirayuki-dono. That's kind of interesting... sort of they're responding to her base status, he's treating her as an honored guest plus all the... complications... Shira and Raji have.

* Between careful listening and the manga, I'm pretty sure Obi says "ojou-san" for Shirayuki much of the time, not my guess of an accented "ojou-sam". But he can switch it up: in one scene he opens with "ojou-san" as basically "Hi" or "Yo", but uses "ojou-sama" when speaking formally to her a moment later. For her part, she just calls him Obi. Then in that scene he loosens up and almost calls her by name, "Shirayu-" before clapping his hand to his mouth in horror.

* ...I just accidentally discovered TV Tropes ojou, which distinguishes 'ojou', lady, from 'oujo', princess. *headdesk* Not a distinction I'd been aware of, obviously, and not sure one my ear would be trained to discern even listening for it. It'll be interesting to try, though, especially where Shirayuki is concerned. Probably it's been 'ojou'.

* Speaking of which, a pirate captain calls Shira "ojou-chan". Given the personality and situation, this was probably mocking, it's like "little lady".

* After being rescued, Shirayuki is "Zen-ouji, Kiki-san, Mitsuhide-san", but once the outsider is dismissed and in the process of leaving, she's back to "Zen!". She'd also used Zen-ouji in talking *about* him to the local prince.

* The chief court herbalist, the one who calls S Shirayuki-kun, says Mitsuhide-sama and Zen-denka. Why is Mitsuhide -sama to her and -dono originally to Kiki? I have no idea. Maybe because Kiki was noble. You'd think a senior court official would kind of rank... Various random guards say "Kiki-dono". (But in the manga, they use -sama.) S uses Zen-ouji in front of her, keeping up appearances. I feel she's more diligent about that this season than she was last, but could be wrong.

* Mitsuhide says Izana-denka in talking about the first prince, Shira says Izana-ouji in talking to him. Again, I don't know if that has any meaning other than varying things up. Except, I note I'm not sure she's *ever* said denka, she uses ouji whenever she bothers being that formal. (Nope, she has, I just caught her saying "Zen-denka" when asking "you're Prince Zen's older brother, right?" Mostly uses ouji, though.)

* Manga: chief herbalist uses -kun on visiting herbalists who are her juniors but not her direct subordinates. She just calls Ryuu by his name though; he's the 12 year old prodigy who outranks most of the others; I assume she's going by his age. Oh, right, he asked S to call him Ryuu, and she's his junior, though he keeps calling her -san. The Chief also says Obi-kun, which is amusing. What *do* you call the prince's sketchy messenger? Izana honors both the chief and Ryuu with -dono, which given his rank and personality really is high honor.

* Huh, I never noticed what Prince Izana calls or uses for Shirayuki. Assuming he's ever *had* to use her name.

* Huh, Raji was saying "Shirayuki-dono" while talking about her to Zen back in first season, when he didn't respect her, just feared Zen. Uses it in talking to her a bit later, too. I guess he's been properly cowed, or is treating her as Zen's lover, which he thought she was.

* Not an honorific per se, but the second time Izana confronts S, I catch him saying "anata", "you", which is fairly rude in Japanese. Then he uses 'hime', "princess", right after that, which is mocking-rude in context.

So, I finally finished the Lets Play of the Fate/stay night visual novel. That sentence probably made no sense to most of my readers, so let me expand:

Visual novel (VN): a Japanese thing I'm not that knowledgeable about. It could be as simple as a novel with graphics, simple animations, and sound (music and dialog). In practice, they usually have you make choices, so it's like a multimedia Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) novel. They're also thought of as a game -- and usually H (for hentai) or ero games, with some sexual content -- albeit ones with far more reading than playing. They also make use of running on a computer: as they're usually about relationships (as it were), you can accumulate relationship points with different characters, which affects branches later on, so it's a bit more complex than a CYOA book.

Fate/stay night: one particular VN by Kinoko Nasu. No one knows what the title means, if anything. The English translation has been described as 800,000 to a million words, twice as long as the Lord of the Rings. It has spawned an anime of the same name, which I'm told is not that good (though popular); a manga, about which I've heard nothing; a prequel light novel series called Fate/zero by Gen Urobuchi (basically canonized fanfic) which spawned an anime of its own; and most recently an anime Fate/Unlimited Blade Works based on the second 'route' of the VN, which I'll explain later. I've seen Fate/UBW (strong start, pacing lags later) and Fate/zero (just plain strong, though dark.)

I imagine that there might be some way to run the VN/game in a Windows environment on my Linux box, with the fan-made English translation files. But, that's a lot of work, and after playing the American-made Black Closet, I'm not sure "playing" this sort of game is really my thing. Happily, some heroic servant of the people made a walkthrough, aka a Lets Play, of the (fan-English) game, including all the bad endings and extras, but excluding the (allegedly bad) sex scenes. I started reading it over a month ago, on October 11th. Last night, I finished.

In addition to being long, the player had snarky comments about Nasu's "words word words", long (not that long) philosophical ramblings at times that didn't make tons of sense. So my ideas for snarky titles were Unlimited Verbiage (as above) or Unlimited Nasu Words, for a closer play on titles.

***

In addition to being longer than LotR, Fate/stay night could also be thought of as a trilogy, but in a different way. It's basically three different stories (also called 'routes') about the same characters and general events. Not three different perspectives on the same sequence of events (which could be interesting, and there is a bit of that in the prologue), but three different main sequences, branching based on early choices by the player. (I guess? I'm actually not sure if it branches solely on that; there seem to be aspects of three different related worlds, with differences that wouldn't depend on your choices. But, not sure, don't care enough to hunt it down.) Two of the routes also have two different good-ish endings each, and across all three routes there are 40 Dead Ends (you die) or Bad Ends (you otherwise fail). It's actually pretty channeled: you have to play the Fate route first, then the UBW route, then the Heaven's Feel route. Another reason I figured I might as well just read it.

So, was it good? It was engaging, at the very least: I didn't take a month to finish because I was slacking off in boredom. It does have flaws and confusing bits; never know what to attribute to the original author vs. the translator, I'd guess some of both. By the end of the UBW anime I was joking that the Holy Grail could punch holes in the plot, not just space.

It has more female roles than LotR, and strong ones. You play as Emiya Shirou (Japanese name order), a teenage boy, but interact heavily -- and not just sexually -- with various girls or women. Tohsaka Rin has been called the deuteragonist, as she plays a major role in all three routes, is the heroine (or love interest) of the second, and even gets to be the narrator in the prologue and one of the endings. (She's also an iconic character of tsundere, twintails, and zettai ryouki fashion... one of my early reactions to the UBW anime was "she's obviously tsundere, but I don't mind, because she's tsundere to *everything* and life in general, not just as a love interest.") And there's various other women, strong in combat, magic, and/or surviving a lot of crap. (And some of them do get a lot of crap to survive.)

It does pass the Bechdel test. I'm not sure it passes it often -- if two women are talking there's a good chance it'll be about Shirou, though "what an idiot" is more likely than "what a hunK" -- but it does.

Shirou's infamously sexist in some ways, like "girls shouldn't fight" despite the girls being able to fight on a completely different level than him, though someone on TV Tropes argues it's deeper than that: that he didn't want Saber fighting because she was *injured*, but (a) couldn't say that well (see: idiot) and (b) thought his life wasn't worth protecting. After barreling through the whole thing, I'm agnostic on the question, aka "I don't want to go back and re-read the first route to have an informed opinion."

The nature of the story allows it to plunder myth and legend at will. Sometimes brutally ("X was never like that!" people say, though I'm "eh, I can see it") but sometimes with research ("Y actually was described as a pretty boy").

It's inspirational: I imagine a lot of fanfic from it (though checking, not as much as I thought; it does rank higher in crossovers than on its own, which makes some sense), and have had some RPG inspirations of my own already. And I can see plundering some of the characters for future PCs. It definitely has memorable characters, of both sexes.

One cool thing for me is that at least three characters are basically Lawful Good (Saber is *officially* LG, she has a stat sheet in-universe!), with very different personalities, and none Lawful Stupid. (Shirou can be dumb but it's more your standard Shounen Stupid). I have an interest these days in how characters can be morally straight-and-narrow yet different people. (Nanoha is also good for that, and to a lesser degree Order of the Stick. Possibly superhero media in general, but that's less my thing.)

Basically, I had fun, and am glad I read it. Should you read it? I don't know if it's *that* good, objectively speaking. Would it be of interest if you hadn't seen related anime, as I had? I can't say.

I know I haven't described what it's *about*; there's a zillion other sources for that, though, so I was going for some underexploited angles, as well as "this was to my taste, if you like my taste you might too."

(Edit: one thing it's about is heroism and the sacrifices made for it. I'm not sure if it says anything deep or useful about it - -I've been more reading than thinking -- but that's definitely A Theme. Maybe even The Theme.)

The new icon is, of course, Rin, apparently giving one of her "now listen up, idiot" lectures.

Just finished re-watching the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, in broadcast order, rather than the chronological order I chose when I first watched it, though I probably saw it in broadcast in club.

I'd forgotten, or now newly appreciate, how obnoxious Haruhi is early on. Sociopathic, even. The contrast is probably increased by having read The Coin, and more recently been watching The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, in which she's still eccentric but a much nicer person. (Also that show got more interesting around episode 9, and even more so in 14 -- Haruhi suddenly gets an internal voice! Weird.)

Awesome band scene is still awesome.

Finale credits have I think two ENOZ members practicing outside, a detail you'd miss in chronological order, but easier to pick up when watching episode 12-12 and 14-6 in the same night.

I'm still agnostic on whether Haruhi is a secondhand god, wielding powers ultimately from Kyon. I don't like that theory, but I can see the ambiguity supporting it.

For a while I was thinking it hadn't aged well, but it does end on a strong note.

***

In other anime news, Nanoha ViVid never got particularly interesting. And I write Nanoha slice of life fanfic. Fail!

Next: Houkago no Pleiades.

Economics profession swings left http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-07/economics-stars-swing-left

Cracked on prostitution myths. Anecdotal, but consistent with studies I've read and possibly linked to in the past. http://www.cracked.com/article_21862_5-ways-life-as-prostitute-nothing-like-you-expect.html

Pew on the religions of Asian-Americans. Christian 42%, 26% none, 14% Buddhist, 10% Hindu. http://www.pewforum.org/2012/07/19/asian-americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-overview/
As a group, they range from the least religious unaffiliated to the most evangelical Protestants. Majority of Korean-Americans are Protestant; I think back in South Korea only 25% are Christian, with 50% having no religion.

Idea on why Charlie Hebdo was attacked:
http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
"France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination."

Westeros-world map updated for Worlds of Ice and Fire http://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/1/10/WorldofIceandFire.png
GRRM deconstructing war, dark Daenerys (spoiles for whole series https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/untangling-the-meereenese-knot-part-iv-a-darker-daenerys/ )
Dornish vengeance (ditto) https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/water-gardens-and-blood-oranges-part-iv-it-ends-in-blood/

no to Boston Olympics
http://m.thenation.com/blog/194529-dear-boston-its-protest-time-say-hell-no-olympic-games
http://www.nobostonolympics.org/

experience of black atheists http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/12/black-atheists-representation/

Attack on Titan/Frozen AMV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXR0WIbubB0

Saudi Arabia and 9/11 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/new-questions-raised-about-u-s-saudi-relationship-1.2890528

America's poor vs. those in other rich countries http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america_s_poor_vs_the_rest_of_the_world.html

I could talk about some of these in more detail at some point, but figured I'd dump for now. Also, this my first table of text and images, because I thought I'd try more images and wrapping text in HTML seems hard. Images are mostly HTML-scaled (to 150 pixels high) and larger if you 'view' them in your browser.
(Edit: I discovered the Livejournal version of this looks like shit in chromium. If you're reading this there in that, might try Firefox or the Dreamwidth link.)
( Table of text and images )
If you want a blind recommendation out of all this, I'd go with RSG, because it's good and pretty short so what do you have to lose? and FMA:B, because it's awesome. Or the original FMA manga, also awesome. I have no opinion on the first FMA anime, I just know the story diverges massively. Oh, and the opening/ending of Mahou Shojoutai, because it's only 4 minutes total, and so pretty and weird. I wish I had someone to share the rest of the series with, but I can't make it a high priority cold recommendation.

At Anime Boston this year, it was impossible to get into panels I wanted for most of Saturday afternoon, which I instead spent watching five episodes of Bunny Drop. I've now watched the rest, and I like it. For conflict and tension it's down there with Maria-sama, Aria, YKK, and Chii's Sweet Home; pure slice of life of a 30 year old bachelor who effectively adopts his 6 year old aunt (Granpa got lucky before he died) and raises her. It is basically pure parenting DAWWWW but as with Maria-sama and Aria and YKK that seems to work on me, and this time there isn't even the usual parade of nubile women. (I can't stand Chii.) Daikichi and Rin may remind me of my and my niblings or friends' kids.

There's a bit of bite: a look at how hard it is to be a single parent in Japan, people taking demotions so they can pick their kid on time, a cousin who runs away from her husband and in-laws, then later other good fathers. I'm influenced here by the Totally Subversive Toons panel, which said that Japan's long recession changed what was acceptable to show in terms of family dynamics and tensions. Before, only happy families; after, a Black Lagoon exec who comes home and ignores his wife and troubled kids. So I'm wondering if "parenting is hard, work isn't everything, and in-laws can suck" is part of that.

I don't know if actual parents would think this is sweet and awesome or just banal because they live it. But for what it is, it seems perfect.

Then I went to look it up online, and learned it's based on manga. Specifically, the first half of the manga, which seems just as perfect in its familial realism, but with more details than the anime. The second half starts with a timeskip of ten years, and, well... volumes 5 and 6 are said to be fine, but after that it takes a very weird turn and you might simply want to skip that.

( Or descriptions of it. But if you don't: )

http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/bunny-drop/ is an interesting and positive review of the manga... again apart from the ending.

So, I still recommend the show, and the first 4-6 volumes of the manga (on hearsay.) Caveat lector on the rest.

Saturday I met up with thomasyan and after some insufficiently filling Bluefin restaurant sushi, went to his place to marathon Madoka.
1) He and his girlfriend liked it. He and I were both crying at the end; she wasn't, which prompted discussion.
2) If you want to watch people speculate, you probably *shouldn't* marathon it; you need a day or more between episodes, not minutes, to let the creative and pattern-finding juices work.
3) We watched the Chihiro sub, which had some differences with whatever the commonly used streaming site offered, I think to the slight disadvantage of Chihiro.
4) The other subs I downloaded turned out to be Italian. Curse shoddy labeling!
5) Lots of early stuff is either hilarious or poignant the second time around.

Thoughts after a second watching:
( Which are totally massive spoilers so if you haven't watched it go away and do so )

Conclusion: still an awesome series. Has minor blemishes from perfection.