King of Bandit Jing stole my heart

First the bad things: The hero is boringly invincible since he is the king of bandits who could steal the stars from the sky. There is not only a villain of the week and a treasure of the week, there's also a girl of the week. The delivery and construction of the moral lessons can be very heavy-handed. The show is extremely episodic, the only connections between the different arcs are the two protagonists and one minor character.

The good thing: Everything above doesn't matter. This anime is not about building up characters or developing stories. It's building a world of dreams. You could look at every episode with a book about dream analysis in your hand and try to decode the symbolism, or you could just lean back and enjoy the atmosphere.

The first episode starts with a sunrise in a desert with some tombstones, some smooth jazz-pop in the background. A lich rides on a green pumpkin carriage, pulled by the skeleton of a giant prehistoric creature. He gets catapulted away by a blue whale slide-crawling after a carrot on a stick. The stick is hold by a metal construct on its back, filled with bandits of all kinds of humanoid species in all kinds of costumes. They travel towards the capital of thieves, a city resembling depictions of the tower of Babel. The king of bandits is watching this scene, his talking crow on a shoulder, next to a tattooed ostrich.

That's just the first 90 seconds of it, as summarized as concise as possible. All the other 90 seconds that are in those 13 episodes are of similar density. It all comes together in a way that makes my mind wanting to figure out the meaning of it. It's just like a dream.

Also, the hero has a bitchin' transformation sequence.

I'll never rewatch Ghost in the Shell

This is the end of two months of wading through GitS:SAC and 2nd Gig. Wading, because although I could have loved it, there are two rather big problems in the execution.

Problem one: Filler.

I don't mind good filler to calm down once in a while, and the filler in GitS is good. The problem is that it's not there once in a while, it's half of the whole show. The first season is worse in that regard, it starts off that way. You might call it introductory episodes, except there are four or five of them and there isn't any connection between them other than characters and general setting. Then they showed me an opponent, the problems in that world etc., and what do they do with it? Nothing. They throw another batch of filler at me, even a bigger one than at the beginning. I almost stopped watching there, but at episode 20 they come back to the plot and give me six quite amazing episodes. It felt like 2nd Gig was better in that regard. It was more equally spread out and there were sometimes small connections to the plot, but the problem was still there.

Problem two: Politics.

I don't mind stories with politics, but a problem many of them have is that they talk a lot without saying much. GitS has that too, especially in 2nd Gig, the content per word ratio was much too low there. One outstandingly awful line (that appeared at least twice): "Let me explain by starting from the beginning." What does that one tell us? He's going to talk, he will explain what has happened up to now, he will go back as far as he can while staying relevant enough and there will be many many many words. In short, he's talking about talking. That could have been better if they scrapped that line completely and made his speech shorter. Don't tell me about the world, show it!

Verdict: If the above doesn't burn into your flesh, slowly drowns your favorite pet and/or makes your brain stay conscious while not being able your zombie body, go ahead and watch it. There's a lot of worse stuff out there.

Hyouge Mono is good

1. Sasuke Furuta: between loyal warrior and romantic hero

A samurai's honor binds him to his lord. To fulfill his lord's wishes is his highest order. Should he falter, he will lead a life in disgrace.

An aesthete's sense binds him to beauty. To achieve and pursue beauty is his highest order. Should he falter, he will lead a life in despair.

Those two worlds are similar, but they can't unite. The first works for a life as a noble subordinate, gaining respect with selfless loyalty. The second longs for a life as a freely thinking individual, gaining self-respect with loyalty to his own standards.

Sasuke Furuta is not an average high school student.

2: Oda Nobunaga is Noriko

Burning down villages? No problem. Slaughtering thousands of innocent people? Before breakfast. Conquering Japan and then the whole world? Piece of cake.

Oda Nobunaga is a demon, or even the demon. He's the obstacle for the hero to overcome. (Shaft would make him tear the medium itself apart.) His theme music is a fanfare of darkness and fire.

Wherever he appears, birds die: cities, humans, hopes. What is not to his liking gets erased. He is the commander of the mortal plane. He's the Faust who deals with the devil by punching him in the face and taking his place.

Except not. Oda Nobunaga is an average high school student person with a lot of ambition.

3. Those Faces

Kyubey PBUH

Do you believe that magic and miracles exist? Do you believe in Madoka?

You know the story. The universe was a horrible place to be human, Kyubey tortured us, Madoka sacrificed herself to create this universe instead. The story spread by her prophet, Homura Akemi. Madoka talks to her, she says. Madoka gave us all a better life, she says. Where does she get that all from? She wishes there was someone like that. She projects her wishes onto an everloving Mother Madoka.

Who would you rather trust: a metaphysical concept or somebody you can see and hear? An emotional teenage girl or one of the greatest scientific minds in the universe? Homura's story is in her mind, she can only tell us about it. The Kyubans share their information among each other and with us as soon as you ask, they represent the scientific ideal of trust in collected and shared knowledge, they are an open source movement. Homura gives us a solution to a hypothetical problem, Kyubey gives a solution to a problem within our universe.

Now let's assume for a moment that the stories are true. Why did Madoka leave the universe? She clearly abandoned us, as she saw no hope, being the angsty teenager she was. There's no reason why she should bother with us when she can simply achieve nirvana. Another thing, wouldn't you find it a bit creepy when a teenage girl can see you on the toilet, in the shower or in bed? Even if you're an exhibitionist, she's still a girl.

The Church of Madoka is a big fat lie. There are no parallel worlds, witches don't exist, Madoka is nowhere. However, you can call for Kyubey and he appers. Abandon the false hope spread by the metaphysical Madoka! Convert to Kyubism now and get one cake for free!

genres are not genres

The eternal questions of any fan of fiction: What is a genre? What exactly is part of this genre? What is my favorite genre? Is this even a genre? I'm here to clear up all the confusion for all eternity!

Robot Shows

Robots are big, clunky pieces of scrap metal and their shows are overly long toy commercials. Is this always true? No! The first robot appearing in Gurren Lagann is as tall as a young boy. Tachikomas are small, agile pieces of scrap metal. The robot in Nichijou is a small, clumsy piece of scrap metal. So what exactly is a robot? How many robots make a robot show? If you go back to Descartes, you find out that the human body is a robot. Everything is a robot show.

Magical Girl

Magical Girls are robots (Nanoha). Magical Girls are lichs (PMMM). Can this be extended to other stuff? Magical Girls fight with the Power of Friendship and/or Love. How many shows are there where this doesn't work? Celty fights because Shinra loves her and she loves him. Galactic Prettyboys are Magical Girls. Gunbuster is so scientific it could as well be called magic. The Power of Friendship and/or love is everywhere. Magical Girls are everywhere.

Slice of Life

Hanasaku Iroha is slice of life. Azumanga Daioh is slice of life. Nichijou is slice of life. What do they have in common? There are girls who do stuff that is normal in their life. Who else does stuff that is normal in their lives? Gundam pilots pilot gundams in their daily lives. Spike Spiegel leads a normal space cowboy life. Baccano is about the daily lives of psychos, immortal mafia members and other weirdos. What is not slice of life? Everything is a slice, a part cut out of someone's life.

Moe Shows

Moe is the feeling you have when you want to hug and protect somebody. (Alternatively: Moe is the boner a dirty male pervert gets when he sees innocent girls.) A moe show is a show about moe girls doing moe stuff. No questions to ask here, everything is perfectly defined and withstands the most Socratic Q&A.

That's it. I'm sick of all this robot elitism bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. Moe shows deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that. I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine moe show in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that's about $20,000) and have been watching it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid robot steel with my moe show. Japanese animators spend years working on a single moe show and fold the plot up to a million times to produce the finest stories known to mankind. Moe shows are thrice as moe as robot shows and thrice as cute for that matter too. Anything a robot can cut through, a yandere can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a tsundere could easily bisect robot wearing full plate with a simple slap. Ever wonder why there are no robots in moe shows? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined animators and their moe girls of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the daimakuras first because their killing power was feared and respected. So what am I saying? Moe shows are simply the best shows that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in the d20 system.

E.T.A. Hoffmann and your waifu

Part the first: Der goldne Topf

A young student named Anselmus sees a fair maiden who transformed into a snake and falls in love. However, her father - a master of magic - is rather protective. He has to overcome some trials, he learns about magic and he has to defeat an evil witch. As a consequence, he has to worship his waifu from afar. In the end he wins and the two go to Atlantis to live happily ever after.

a) Waifus are not real. Serpentina is daughter from Atlantis, she can turn into a Snake, etc. What's more important, she's barely an acting character. Everything about her is idealized, she's the princess in her tower waiting for the hero to save her, as it should be in Romanticism. A woman has to be perfect, or else she isn't.

b) Real women are not waifus. Veronica is a normal girl who has a crush on Anselmus. However, despite asking a witch for help, she doesn't see the poetic world and can't build a connection to him. Later she marries a normal man who rejects the phantasms of the crazy people.


Part the second: Der Sandmann

A young student named Nathanael sees a fair maiden through a telescope and falls in love. However, her father - a master of alchemy - is rather protective. He has to undergo secret tests, he is deceived by magic and he has to fight against an evil alchemist. As a consequence, he has to worship his waifu from afar. In the end his waifu turns out to be an alchemistic automaton, he goes insane and jumps off a tower.

a) Waifus are not real. Olimpia is an alchemistic robot, constructed to mimick humans, like anime characters are the puppets of the animators. Nathanael sees her through a (possibly magick'd) spyglass and falls in love. Subsequently her eyes fill with life, her perfection leads to idealization and her lack of vocabulary gets turned into a deeper understanding of nuances. How many ways are there to say "Ach, ach!"? How many ways are there to say uguu?

b) Real women are not waifus. Clara is Nathanael's fiancée, but not his slave. He recites his poetry, she criticises it as overly dreamy, he calls her a heartless machine (oh the irony). She's not his slave, but she cares for him. When he and her brother through circumstances want to duel, she jumps between them because she wants to lose neither. She cares for him, but she can get over him. A few years after his death she finds a man who isn't insane and lives happily ever after.

The ghost that haunts the shell

Quote from GitS:SAC, episode 14: "Isn't there anybody here besides ghostless dolls?" Meta-awareness about the female characters?

The woman who appears in one episode is running around in her underwear. Only three others females were shown for more than five minutes. They're lonely islands in a big ocean. Two girls were only there to show them together in a bed, and one of them was even only seen for these few seconds. Yeah, fanservice is fanservice and all that blah, but here it actually annoys me.

The story is interesting, the characters are likable, the world is realistic enough, so everything would be okay. Except it isn't, exactly because of the fanservice. The story is interesting, except it's artificially separated from her underwear The characters are likable, except they don't bother to explain why she's running around in her underwear. The world is realistic enough, except WHY THE HOLY HELLFUCKSHIT IS NOBODY REACTING TO HER ALWAYS WEARING UNDERWEAR AND NOTHING MORE?

It distracts me from the good parts. For everything they're doing right, there's a scene with her underwear. It actually pulls me out of the experience. I don't care if it's only hot pants and a tank top, just give her some normal clothes! I donn't mind it in Raildex or Dirty Pair or some other shit (there's other reasons to dislike them), but here it's just at odds with everything else they're doing. Why don't you just do all this other stuff and abandon the shitty distractservice?

I hate because I care.

Fable of Fansubs and Funimation

Two beggars walking through the streets,
discussing methods of their trade.
The first is honest, charming kids
and women gets his money made.
The other, cunning, quick hand, steals,
his food's worth comes from shady deals.
Across the street, in bigger shoes,
the rich man marches, heel to toes.
Delightful smiling eyes he shows;
behind his back, his hand is loose.
The stealer laughs: "Is this man good?
He judges me and does the same"
- "While you are not without a blame,
at least you do it for your food."

All Hail Moé (everyone's a hater in their own way)

The internet is huge and there are a lot of stupid people on it. Some of them are otakus. Or rather, a disgrace to every true otaku. Here's my try to educate the stupid masses.

~= The Orange Jumpsuit =~

These guys are not that bad, they're just obnoxious because they're new to animé. That reminds me of a story. When I was five years old on the playground, we were a group. Then somebody new came. He wanted to be our friend, but we didn't want that because he was new and obnoxious. Then my parents scolded me. Goddamn oppressive communist fascist nazis. They were nice otherwise though. Were.

~= Moralist Moralizing Moralfag =~

They want to burn your daimakura, distract you from sweet romancing with your imouto and generally kill your waifu. They are wrong because being a decent human being is wrong. There's absolutely nothing wrong with pedophilia or incest, so these people should be trolled. Because trolling obviously makes you superior to those people.

~= Old McCranky =~

He was here before you were born. Animé has changed while he was busy having a life. It's different now, so it obviously sucks, he says. Well, he's wrong! Little girls are better than strong men! I'm not gay! He doesn't like animé with little girls so he obviously must be gay. And although he's gay, he doesn't like you. What a tasteless asshole.

~= Perilious Pornographer =~

Porn! The way to get everybody into animé, he thinks. I can't even describe how wrong he is. He's so wrong, Charlie Sheen and mai waifu together in a funny boob grope scene would be less wrong. And I'm not saying this because he's similar to me, because he's not, because just so you know. My love to mai waifu is pure and innocent, he just wants to see horrible smut. He also watches nothing else. How horrible is that? His point of view is so deranged, he doesn't even see that he's wrong and horrible and absolutely not similar to me.

~= Anti Moé Warmonger =~

These are the guys who hate everything cute and moé. They don't like that moé is pandering to the database animals. They don't like our imoutos, our tsunderes, our dojikkos and our onanisajimi. They say that there is nothing of substance in it. Well, isn't Shakespeare always the same crossdressing and misunderstandings and stuff? Nobody complains about it there. Every moé show has some sort of substace, they just don't see it. And why should I tell them what kind of substance there is? They don't wanna see it anyway. They are so blind and dumb. They hurt the industry by not buying what they produce. They are everything that's wrong with anime fandom nowadays. Seriously, fuck these guys.

Mitsudomoe Mauling: Grande Finale

What happened last week: The two groups travelled through extraordinary landscapes. In the end, they both arrived at their goal, which was coincidentally the same. Also there was Gachi Red, who kidnapped Yotsuba and he had a bomb. Now to the continuation of these amazingly interesting events!

Gachi Red talked for a bit: "Muahaha! You can't stop my plan to save the world! The Gedol Empire wants to conquer the earth and enslave everybody, but that can't happen if the world doesn't exist. All I have to do is destroy the earth and it will be saved! My plan is perfect! They all have to trust me to save the earth. I can't stick a knife in their stomach and then apologize, that'd be bad manners. Apologizing is first. I'm sorry that I have to destroy the earth, but it's necessary to save everybody from enslavement. They shall not live long in enslavement. They all trust me. I'm their best friend on the internet. They all trust me! This green hair is the future that will destroy the earth. Nobody can stop me now that the book is written. Trust me."

The others didn't want to accept that. Mitsuba and Sugisaki hit him with their magical beams. Futaba headbutted him in the gut. Hitoha just ignored him and deactivated the bomb. Gachi Red fell to the ground, but he was barely scratched. Yotsuba started to cry. Then King Gedol and one of his servants appeared from behind a tree. "Give up, Gachi Red! You can't defeat me this time! I will do everything necessary to defeat you! These magical girls are more powerful that they seem right now! Watch this!" He pressed a big brown button on a remote. Mitsuba and Sugisaki transformed again. They melted into the ground and rose to the sky. They changed shapes again and again and finally found the form of sphinxes. They paw-crushed Gachi Red unconcious in one hit.

"Wait wait wait, there's something fishy going on here!" Hitoha noticed. "King Gedol, where's your Szepter von Chaos? You never leave your castle without it! Your robe is a much darker shade of red! Your crown doesn't show have the right gem in the front for Wednesday! Your voice reminds me of someone else! And servant, weren't you the idiot mook who died repeatedly in the castle's sand trap in season five episode eight? You two are the worst impersonators I've ever seen!" The two looked surprised, but quickly recovered. "Oh well, seems like we were found out. It doesn't really matter now that our job is done." They took their masks off. It was Bernhard and Jean-Marc. Hitoha was surprised. "It's you! The guys who gave me the job! What are you trying to do? Mitsuba! Sugisaki! Attack them!" The paws were flying, but they escaped into the log cabin. Flurina went with them, but not without taking the magical power from the two girls. Then the Gachicopter arrived. They collected Gachi Red. "Thank you, kids! He's kind of difficult right now. He's in a midlife crisis. Please don't be too harsh on him. Goodbye!" They flew away into the sunset. They pulled a banner saying "See you in next episode!" behind them because computer effects were too expensive. Sadly there was a temporal paradox in the log cabin as Flurina, Jean-Marc and Bernhard met their past selves. The world exploded.

Meanwhile in the real world, Hitoha was very very angry. "Sugisaki! Why did you continue to write this crap? Gah!" Sugisaki closed the book. "It's finally finished and you don't even show the desired reaction? At least you read the whole thing. At least that worked." Hitoha ignored her. "You managed to tie up the biggest loose threads, but how! And you didn't explain the inconsistencies at all! You just made them worse until they exploded! That's not how writing a story works!" Sugisaki took her rabbit out of the cage and talked with it. "Look how jealous Hitoha is. She can't even write a book herself. Don't you think she should just drop dead? Because I think she should just drop dead."

Meanwhile in the real real world, Hitoha and Yabe-sensei were riding on a train into the sunset. "What do you think, Hitoha? Don't you think this story is amazing? Maybe I can even sell it to the producers of Gachi Rangers and get rich and famous! My dreams will all come true!" Hitoha didn't rolled her eyes. "There are too many problems in there. What's with that beginning? You introduce some characters and do nothing with them! Why are they even there? A story should start with the protagonist! Why didn't you cut that stuff a bit? Why didn't you start at a later point?" Yabe put his intelligent face on. "What is the beginning of a story? Who is the protagonist? Can you always tell? The story begins where you start telling it. You decide who the protagonist is. Somebody else would tell the story completely different. There is no universal truth."