The Anim(e)ted World

Assassination Classroom is something I've tried to get into a couple of times (specifically, with reading the manga) and I just haven't been able to stick with it. However, I had a good time watching these episodes, and I'll have to try and get into it once finals are through. Even though the premise of the show is kind of wacky, I think there are still some real-world parallels to be found.

I think the most prominent theme in these episodes of Assassination Classroom as well as the series as a whole are the consequences of institutional discrimination. The students of Class 3-E prove just as bright if not brighter than the other students at the academy. However, despite this, they are essentially used as targets for the rest of the student body, to serve as a motivation for the other classes to succeed. This shows that, sometimes, there are groups in various areas of society that are looked down upon or actively worked against by the system for reasons that are completely irrational.

I think Assassination Classroom also lends a lot of support towards the idea that a good educator can really make a difference in the lives of their students. Even though Koro-sensei is an alien who wants to destroy the world, the passion and care with which he teaches the students in Class 3-E, bringing out their talents and bolstering their weaknesses, shows the benefits that a good education can have for an individual, even those who may be in less fortunate circumstances (such as Class 3-E).

I also thought it was really fun watching the characters battle the physical representations of their final exams, especially with finals week coming up. It'll be hard to not feel like I'm doing that myself, but we'll make it through!

I'm a big fan of Cyberpunk Edgerunners. I originally played Cyberpunk 2077 when it came out, and I've also toyed with the Cyberpunk 2020 and Red tabletop games. Thus, I very excited to watch Edgerunners again (I watched it on release, too). In going back through these episodes, I refreshed myself on the themes that make Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk - the disastrous consequences of unchecked capitalism, and the dangers of over-reliance on technology.

From the first episode of Edgerunners, we bear witness to the cash-is-king society of Night City, California. David is constantly looked down upon by his classmates for not being as financially well-off as his peers; his mother dies as a result of a lack of insurance coverage and the care of an inferior medical establishment; he turns to a life of crime in order to live. The environment that is built by these episodes show the possible life paths in the Cyberpunk universe - either buy into the system and work to live, or break the law to do the same. No matter which way an individual turns, the motivations are the same: to earn enough eurodollars to cover their basic necessities.

Technology is a central element to the Cyberpunk series, and a defining factor in episodes 6 and 10. Maine experiences absolute detachment from reality as a result of his cybernetic implants; David experiences a similar detachment in his assault on Arasaka Tower. While I don't think anything directly like this is happening in real life, it's a cautionary tale as implants and cybernetics become even more enhanced in the future - at what point do we lose grips on our humanity as a result of augmenting ourselves? This may be a stretch, but I also think that this can serve as a warning for the use of modern technology. As the line between virtual and reality becomes blurred, how do we stay grounded?

Good lord. I now have a love-hate relationship with Perfect Blue. It was a stellar movie. On the other hand, Perfect Blue instilled an intense sense of dread in me from the first note that Mima received in the fax that just intensified until the end of the film. As horrifying as it was at times, I do think it did a really good job at depicting the negative side of fandom and the battle between desire for success and sticking by one's own boundaries.

The more deranged elements of fandom were on full display from the very beginning of the film. Through Me-Mania's actions (which later turned out to be on Rumi's orders - I was writing this as I watched), from stalking Mima, committing murder, and attempting rape, it illustrated an extreme example of what may happen when a fan of someone or something becomes far too wrapped up in their obsession and becomes detached from reality. These actions are absolutely deranged and all done in the name of a twisted sense of devotion and absolute mania towards a public figure in what I construe as a parasocial relationship taken far too far. Me-Mania's fragile state due to this engagement with fandom was able to be easily manipulated by Rumi, who drove Me-Mania to commit such acts.

I think Perfect Blue also puts on full display Mima's struggle to balance her desire to succeed and do right by those who helped her with her own personal boundaries. This first manifests in the rape scene, where she essentially bears it but laments doing it behind closed doors, something then repeated in her being photographed naked. This cognitive dissonance eventually results in her seeing the version of herself from her idol days, and a complete fracture of her psyche. The smooth transitions between completely unrelated scenes and the increased intertwining of the drama's plot and Mima's actual life show her losing grips on reality as well. These scenes, in my eyes, show the mental strain that such a life can take on an individual, and the consequences of acting in a way that's detached from how one perceives themself - especially in the public eye.

I don't think I've ever known what was going on less than when I was watching Perfect Blue. Every time I did, the plot switched up on me again, and there were times where I couldn't tell what was real, either. I'm glad Perfect Blue did end happily for Mima. However, I am very much looking forward to feeling more certain about things when I watch Cyberpunk Edgerunners for Monday (I've already seen it).

I was excited to read Sensoron today. Even though I enjoy anime, I am much more of a manga reader these days - additionally, as someone who is at least marginally interested in history, I found the prospect of a revisionist-history Japanese perspective after World War 2 a very compelling premise. As I went through this work, I found it to bring up some interesting points, but overall it almost seems like a rambling from a bitter conspiracy theorist who just wants to see WW2-era Japan in a more positive light than it deserves.

I found the overall work of Sensoron to be, as mentioned earlier, a great example of revisionism and, at times, flat-out misinformation. Given what the author was trying to communicate, about how 'Japan was treated unfairly' and 'the Allies did bad stuff too' clearly attempts to downplay the atrocities committed by the nation during the war. Instead of taking an objective standpoint and accepting that, while the Allies did do some morally questionable things during the war, Japan is guilty of the same, the author attempts to frame the West as the REAL bad guys, and the root of a grand array of problems in modern Japanese society.

One thing I think the author did not intend to showcase (but does) is the mental gymnastics that he has to go through in order to justify Japan and delegitimize the West. I thought the entire first sequence about the trials and the subsequent Western involvement in Japan was far-fetched, with elements of truth buried in it - but as soon as the author started accusing photos displaying Japanese war crimes as fake, comparing them to UFOs and ghosts, the argument lost any shred of legitimacy. Through these perspectives, Sensoron communicates a perspective that is unhinged at best and deliberately deceptive at worst.

Your Name is a movie that I've been meaning to watch for a while, but just hadn't gotten around to it. As the fifth movie we've watched in class, I can't say I liked it as much as End of Evangelion or A Silent Voice, I still think it was a very strong film with many good themes and definitely something I will have to watch again to fully understand.

I definitely think the creators of Your Name wanted to push a message of embracing tradition over modernity. A great portion of the film is dedicated to showing how a return to spirituality and tradition is what began the path towards the people of the town being saved instead of destroyed by the offshoot of the comet. When Taki realizes that the thread of time has been broken and Mitsuha and the town have both been gone for years, it is only when he departs his city life, journeys to the old shrine, and partakes in the ceremonial sake that he can begin to alter fate. Also, I think the movie puts a greater reverence on the activities happening in traditional living - a great amount of care and detail is put into the making of the woven ribbons, the making of the sake, and the visits to the shrine, as opposed to the much more mundane elements of city life shown through Mitsuha and Taki's experiences in Tokyo.

I also think that fate as a concept is explored in the movie. I don't mean this to imply that Your Name is trying to say that everything is predestined to happen - I just think that it states that there will always be events and happenings that are out of the control of humanity, but it is the decisions that we as humans make that truly define the future.

I had heard of Hetalia prior to watching the assigned episodes for tonight, and after watching the episodes, I was definitely thinking to myself 'what on Earth did I just watch'? Although I didn't quite understand what was going on at times, I think I was able to catch on to enough to write about. I think that not only the plot but also the existence of Hetalia in the first place have applications to the real world.

If there was one thing that I were to take away from Hetalia, it is that history and international relations are complicated. Even in the more fictionalized elements of the episodes we watched, there was some kind of friction or confusion going on that made things much less smooth than they could be. I already know this to be the case, but it was interesting seeing this kind of strange spin on real events. I think the entire concept of the show itself calls into question what is and isn't grounds for parody - this show covers some topics that are not necessarily humorous and attempts to make them so. When some of the topics in question are actual wars that happened, it made me wonder about the ethics of parody (at least in this respect) and the making light of very heavy events.

Maybe things would make a little more sense if I were to complete the series, so maybe I'll have to make that happen. I definitely think that the format of the episodes (the 5 minute length, the multiple storylines within each episode, etc.) lent itself to a very chaotic and disjointed experience when compared to the movies and shows we've watched before in this class. I will welcome the more long-form format of Your Name when we watch that for Friday.

I had heard of Xenoblade Chronicles prior to watching these cutscenes (mostly due to characters from the series' inclusion in Super Smash Brothers) but I didn't know very much about its actual plot or anything from the actual games prior to watching these cutscenes. Admittedly, I had to look up a plot summary to bridge some of the gaps and fully grasp what was going on, but once I had both watched the cutscenes and read the synopsis, I could see that this game paints a picture of some themes that could definitely be described as eco-consciousness as well as some that could warn of the effect humanity can have on itself if no accountability is in place.

From the beginning of the cutscene playlist, I immediately drew connections to elements of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The Cloud Sea paralleled the Toxic Jungle to me - an area not fully understood, not habitable, and as we come to find, the result of human action. It's not hard to draw a connection to real-world pollution and the ruination of land as a result of human activity. This theme is compounded upon by the destruction of Elysium, as a direct result of individual actions. However, the message is not all negative and bleak - the end of the story sees the dissolution of the Cloud Sea and an almost reborn world, which I believe implies a hopeful message and the possibility for humanity to turn itself around before it's too late.

Overall, though there are definitely many elements of the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 cutscenes that aren't related to this theme, I believe that the story communicates the importance of preserving the world and the potential ramifications of letting the actions of certain individuals go unchecked and ruining the environment for everyone else.

SwampCon was a very interesting experience. As I've been a fan of pop culture for a long time and anime a little more recently, I was of course aware of conventions and the kinds of things one would find in them, but I had never actually attended. Funnily enough, I had never attended SwampCon, but as a Gainesville resident, I had definitely heard of it from many people in high school. All this being said, in addition to the great amount we learned in class from the series we watched, specifically Genshiken, and the readings associated with this series, going to SwampCon and taking in all the things going on there definitely showed me a real-world example of the concepts of fandom, shadow cultural capital, and the personalization of fiction in order to 'possess' these non-physical things.

I was not at SwampCon as long as I wanted to be (due to a tremendous project that I had due the following Monday in another class) but I made sure to check out what I thought would be most relevant to the material we had learned in class. Namely, I did a lot of looking at the merchandise and material that was being sold in the vendor areas in the Reitz. It wasn't exactly like Genshiken (I would have been a little alarmed to see the type of doujinshi shown in Genshiken, but it would have been a strong connection from the series!). However, there was a similar vein of merchandise being sold in the sense that a lot of it was handmade representations of elements from various anime and pop culture series, which could be taken as examples of simulacra and the claiming of fictional elements as a means of possession for their fans (as we talked about).

This being said, I think the accumulation of shadow cultural capital as a concept was definitely in full swing (in my opinion) during SwampCon. One massive way in which this was happening was definitely cosplay of its attendees - it was difficult to find any people there that were not dressed up in some way, including me (though it wasn't a full-on cosplay, I had a cardigan on with a design from Bleach) and the friend I went with (who went as Asuka from Evangelion). This was one of the methods of acquisition we had talked about, and it was very compelling to see that in action. Additionally, there were examples of physical claiming of fandom as well, which I saw most strongly in the art rooms - where there were a lot of art pieces made by various fans that you could buy that clearly were not official but were original in their own right through the effort put in by their creators. I did not have time to go to any panels, but I imagine shadow cultural capital also played a hand in that element of SwampCon. I've never been to a panel like the ones here, but I understand that a lot of it is talking about specific series and enumerating parts of them to a wide audience.

I went into Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind with the expectation that is would be a film about environmentalism to some degree, as had been alluded to in class. In watching it, I found this to be somewhat the case, as much of the movie hinges around this theme - not only in its setting, but through its major plot elements and overarching motifs.

It is plain to see the environmental undertones of Nausicaa from the start of the movie - as a result of immense conflict, the Toxic Jungle was created, the setting in which the movie takes place. The transformation of a previously habitable area into a much more hostile environment where life quite literally cannot sustain itself is a pretty clear-cut allegory for pollution. This theme is further compounded upon by Nausicaa's findings relating to the plants in the Toxic Jungle, in which the plants grown under normal conditions are fine but those grown under toxic conditions are toxic. I choose to interpret this as a warning against the consequences of pollution - though the pollution itself is a detriment, it goes to show the ramifications on other elements of the environment that it can cause as well.

It is easy to see how these themes made it into Nausicaa, especially considering the real-world inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki's work on the film: mercury poisoning of Minamata Bay and the environment's response. After having researched the film and having this context for its production, it is certain that Nausicaa promotes an anti-pollution and pro-environmentalist message, while also commenting on the dangers of greed, fear, and conflict as a whole. I believe this film also bears a message of hope for the future, as the movie ends on the growth of a non-toxic tree in the Toxic Jungle, signifying that regrowth and recovery is possible.