Dillon Morse

This anime is decidedly not for me, I think. I've never watched it up until now, though of course I've heard about it, and I think I would've been content to have never watched it. It didn't spark anger or fury or anything in me, I just didn't really care for what I watched. The humour fell flat to me, the stereotypes were portrayed either too obviously exaggerated but still based on offensive prejudices to the point of being boring, or portrayed not exaggerated enough to the point that I wondered whether or not it was supposed to be satire anymore. And of course like many others (in this class or otherwise) have brought up, the portrayal of Nazi Germany is... disconcerting, given the nature of what actually occurred during World War II. Sorry, but any show where I have to forget that the silly main character we should be goofing off with is a Nazi in order to enjoy it is not the show for me!

Tangential to what I said about the stereotypes being not exaggerated enough, I did also think that the show seemed to paint the character of Japan as the most "realistic" one, i.e. everyone else (except for maybe Germany at times, too) seemed to exist only as stereotypes, but Japan seemed to exist as a character who just had stereotypical quirks. But like Germany, it's not like Japan exactly has a clean track record with World War II either...

I've lost count of how many times I've watched this film. It's one I always recommend to and am happy to rewatch with friends and it's my go-to film to put on if I just want some background noise or viewing while I'm working on other things. Somehow, I still find myself noticing new things on some of these rewatches, and that was true this time, too, with the hindsight of all our previous modules under our belt.

I was reminded of previous terms we've gone over, gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. I think those two words can be tied into the contrast shown in the film between the country life Mitsuha lives and the city life that Taki lives, respectively. Mitsuha represents the community bonds and shared beliefs of gemeinschaft and that is most of what we see of her life. Taki's screentime, on the other hand, shows how much his life revolves around corporation and impersonal connections with his colleagues, with Mitsuha even berating him for working too much. But the more they swap bodies, the more each of them experiences the other half of the gemeinschaft-gesellschaft dichotomy and the stronger their bond to each other grows, until they can finally 'sync up' atop the mountain.

Only temporarily, of course.

This is a game I've always been meaning to try but never got around to. I knew absolutely nothing about the actual story, I'd only seen the cast of characters. And even though I knew from the lecture page that it took place on a destroyed Earth, I was still surprised by just how much it relates to the environmental messages and readings we've been assigned. I didn't expect the story to go where it did, and I found it very interesting that the nature these characters have been living in is actually entirely man-made.

Much like in Nausicaa, humans (and one human in particular, Klaus) had a terrible effect on the world. But in the case of Xenoblade, that effect is so severe that there was no world left. Nature could not heal itself over time like it did in Nausicaa and it was entirely up to human-made nano-machines to fix things and recreate nature. But maybe it makes more sense to simply say "recreate the world" instead of recreating nature specifically, because the point I get from this game when also thinking about our assigned reading is that humanity is nature. Humanity is not something that acts on nature but within it, a part of it. Humanity is nature and not only needed saving just as much as the trees and plants and animals that we commonly think of separately from humans as nature, but deserved it just as much, too.

This is one of my favourite films, not just in the Studio Ghibli collection but films in general. The worldbuilding is relatively simple, but I still adore it and the characters in the film. Except for Kurotowa, he can take a hike.

This film has a strong and obvious reference to the pollution and destruction of the environment that we've done in real life, but given the time period it came out in, I think it's also fair to say that a lot of the film is a metaphor for nuclear weaponry too. It fits better, I think, with the idea of an "invisible" poison that slowly kills people (like Nausicaa's father). Yes, there are the spores that you breathe in that are quite visible that will make you sick, but as Nausicaa found out through her private garden, it's not the spores themselves that are toxic, but the soil and water they grow in.

But it's not really made clear what the pollution is. More than that, there's not really anything shown being done about it because you can't do anything about it. There's no attempts to clean the soil or purify the water because humans can't do that, only nature can. This is very similar to radioactive fallout in real life, where once an area is affected, there's not really much you can do except wait it out, and it's not something you can just "stop" polluting with like you can with chemical waste or garbage or stuff like that. Once a place is radioactively polluted, that's kind of it. That's why I think this film is more about nuclear fallout than run-of-the-mill pollution.

Very different than I expected and more than a little confusing. This ending is much more drastically changed compared to the TV series episodes than I expected, and I'm honestly not even totally sure if it's completely changed the episodes or if the last episodes happen in the middle of this movie or what. Either way, it was interesting to watch when keeping all this discussion of masculinity and whatnot in mind, because otherwise I don't think I would have paid so much attention to the flip-floppy nature of Shinji's gender performance here, especially when compared to Asuka.

There's obviously that scene at the start, but there's also of course the part in his weird visions where he flips a table and starts choking Asuka to try and kill her (I assume?). This seemed like the exact moment his ego truly died, triggering the merging of humanity. The true Shinji, the queer masculinity Shinji, died there in favour of the violent, more traditionally masculine Shinji instead. And this led to a world where all of humanity died-but-not-really and Shinji was not satisfied with the result, even if it meant no more pain for him. Whatever it is that results from him being hegemonically masculine, he finds it wrong.

After this, he regains his form by wishing to live, along with Asuka. Near immediately after noticing her, he once again tries to strangle her, repeating the same act that signaled the end of humanity during his ego death. But then Asuka, in a rare display of affection, caresses him, and he regains his form for a second time—this time the form of Shinji who exhibits queer maculinity, back from the dead. Asuka and Shinji seemed to swap places for a moment there, really, with her being gentle and affectionate for that moment and then going right back to belittling him once he reverts back, too.

Like I said in my first post for NGE, I've never watched the show, only seen a few things here and there. Thank god those few things have included explanations or brief synopses of things so I was not totally lost in the last two episodes (last three, really; I chose to watch episode 25 as well).

If I thought Rei was a somewhat fitting role of a foil for Shinji and his queer masculinity, then Asuka is definitely the best one who fits that role instead. She is what people wanted Shinji to be at the start: confident, roaring to go, and violent. She was excited for an angel attack because it meant she got to show off her piloting skills. She is the image of masculinity that Shinji needed to be, wanted to be, and couldn't be. He tried to be, in episode 16 at least, being confident and condescending to Asuka after she teases him. But that image of masculinity is washed away once he falls into the shadow and that hegemonic masculinity can no longer save him. He can't punch his way out of the void or escape through sheer cockiness. His attempts at mimicking hegemonic masculinity are what got him into this trouble, showing that it clearly is not for him.

Admittedly, for episodes 24–26, even knowing the general synopsis, I was still kinda lost and it was difficult to follow along. But one thing I kept thinking was how the show played with the medium for its effects, here. Relating back to our early module on animation itself, I kept appreciating the art styles and compositing the show used, even using what looked like just straight up scans of hastily drawn pencil sketches for some scenes.

Though I have heard the last episodes were rushed due to production issues and that might contribute too, I think it actually works quite well—it's not the kind of effect you can really achieve outside animation, and I think it metaphorically plays well with Shinji's struggle. He is struggling with his image and how he appears to others while all these different drawn images and forms of him are shown on screen, ranging from his usual image we see for most of the episodes to vaguely humanoid blobs.

I have not watched this anime before, save for some clips of the angels here and there, so it has been interesting to get more context surrounding some of the events in the show I've seen in this clips or heard about from others. Particularly relating to Shinji and his "queer masculinity." I had not heard that term before nor had I heard this take on Shinji before, but I can see why it's relevant and why this show was chosen for the module. I can see why Shinji exhibits queer masculinity per Heasley's definition of it—he's not suited for violence or male domination, whether it be in the robot or outside of it. This is possibly why his father didn't need him (up until he did), because if Shinji is an example of queer masculinity, what was shown of his father in these first few episodes is the exact opposite. He is a man in power, in charge of weapons of violence, with women who are subordinate to him.

Shinji, on the other hand, was always taking directions from or waiting for women in positions of power above him to tell him what to do. He needed to be rescued by Misato, taken to the giant robot and told to pilot it (or another woman would, one who was stronger, less cowardly than him—ergo more masculine and thus more useful than him) while flanked on two sides by two women in charge. He was punched by his classmate from school and did not want to punch him in return, only doing it reluctantly and then crying out that he deserve to be hit more for his non-hegemonically-masculine traits.

MCM London is the only convention I have been too—so far! It was an amazing experience and I am glad I got to experience it with my partner—I cannot wait to go to another convention when money allows for it. We went with a group of friends and although neither my partner nor I did any cosplay, there were a couple in our group who did. And of course we saw plenty of other cosplayers at the convention itself, many of whom were happy to allow us to take pictures to share:

(Don't worry, we made sure at the time that they were okay with their pictures being put online, too.)

Seeing the amount of effort some people put into their cosplays and their display of fandom was really incredible. Even the cosplays that were intentionally low effort were amazing to me, because I was just inspired by the passion that someone has to have for a show or movie to want to do something like that in the first place.

My partner and I spent most of our time in the artist alley, looking at all the fan merch that people were selling. It was mostly art prints; my partner picked up a few prints of Adventure Time fanart to put up on her wall, and I got a couple keychains of some characters I like from Arknights. Though, I didn't come anywhere close to the number of keychains or pins I saw stuck to some peoples backpacks. In hindsight, I definitely understand the idea of amassing tons of shadow culture in lieu of hoarding one or two exclusive pieces. There were people who had backpacks with so much merch stuck to them that you couldn't even see the fabric of the backpack itself unless you looked close enough.

And even at the time I thought it was interesting that you could sort of tell what fandom someone identified with most just by looking at who they were around. This might sound obvious, but I mean it in the sense that it seemed like people within the same fandom tended to stick together even if they weren't actually traveling with everyone there. I often saw Adventure Time cosplayers or people with Adventure Time merch nearby, and there were a couple moments where people had impromptu "[fandom] meetup" moments because they happened to find each other; I remember at one point seeing a group of like fifteen people cosplaying various Final Fantasy characters having a random group photo after finding each other. I just wonder if it was really true coincidence in all these cases, or maybe there was some subconscious part noticing these bits of fandom culture on the people around them and naturally gravitated towards them, even without realizing it.

The more official stuff was nice too, of course. There were some voice actors for things I didn't recognize there giving out autographs, which I do think is a pretty cool way of "owning" a piece of your favourite media. Like, you're not really owning any piece of it obviously, but the person who voices your favourite character wrote a message to you on a picture of that character, so in a way, it's almost like the character you like themselves is speaking to you, right? I think that's one of the draws to it anyway—I don't have any signed merch myself, but I can't deny it would be nice to have if there was a character I particularly liked.

This anime is one of the few I've seen (which isn't to say there aren't others) that tries to depict and represent the issues it does, that is, the realization in youth that you might not fit into your assigned gender identity/performance and you don't really know what to do about it, not when the world around you doesn't want to help you figure it out. But from the start it's made exceptionally clear that Nitori does not feel comfortable living as a boy. She complains that the boys uniform is too tight and suffocating. The performance she has to put on, like one puts on a uniform, does not fit her.

Takatsuki doesn't fit within his uniform, either, and mirrors Nitori in that he would rather perform masculine gender. Unfortunately, society at large does not really accept the fact that someone can present as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, an issue that transgender children (and adults, of course!) still face just about everywhere today. Sure, no one really reacts badly to Takatsuki coming to school in a boys uniform, but that doesn't mean they see him as male. They see him as a girl emulating male gender—that's not exactly affirming. Takatsuki dressing up in a boys outfit is only acceptable because women emulating men is seen as a normal, if not slightly out of the box, thing to do. But Takatsuki doesn't want to be a woman or to be seen as just playing pretend.

And as we saw, the consequences for Nitori coming to school dressed as a girl had much more severe social consequences. Even Anna, as supportive as she was before, broke up with Nitori because of the surprise of seeing Nitori present as the gender she was most comfortable with.

(In fairness to Anna, the two of them do get back together later in the manga and she accepts Nitori's identity.)

Another popular show that I've just never seen before! It was enjoyable, even if the "monster of the week" format isn't quite for me. I also accidentally did this module a bit out of order, so my viewing of it was with both the Newsom and Butler texts in mind.

It's a classic example of textbook Girl Power and I do think it was important that young kids, young girls especially, had someone like Usagi Tsukino to watch growing up to show them that girls could be powerful and heroic while still being clearly girly. There is no need for them to try and fit themselves into a more masculine role in order to be strong, and they should be happy to embrace their traditionally feminine interests.

However, I do also see what Newsom means when she says that this girl power is still restricted by the patriarchy, which ties into the Butler readings too. This Girl Power emphasizes the fact that these girly things like makeup and tiaras and jewelry are still valid and powerful. But, why are those things girly? It's good that these girls can find power in their girly objects, but why are those objects girly? Why can't someone who doesn't consider themselves a woman enjoy makeup, for example? Not in a "men should have this power too!" sort of way; I don't mean men, I mean people who don't consider themselves women in the same way society defines what a woman is, in keeping with the "gender is a construct" concept. Girl Power in this context seems inherently reliant on what society defines "girl" as in the first place.

I've watched season 1 of this show years ago but never anything past that, and it was great to have a reason to watch some of it again with a more critical eye than before. That said, it's not like I missed it the first time around how much this show is critiquing through comical parody the themes of workplace discrimination and misogyny. Retsuko has to deal with a boss with a clear prejudice against her and women in general and she just doesn't have a choice but to go along with it if she wants to keep her job. Her and Fenneko discuss reporting him to HR, but they need Haida, another man, to step in and remind them that it won't lead to anything. Haida might not have been intending to, but even in that moment he was perpetuating the idea that it's the men who are in charge and decide what's worth pursuing or not, and the women just have to accept it.

Even Washimi and Gori, two successful women high up on the corporate ladder, need to 'perform gender,' to put it in Judith Butler terms; they need to walk like women or else they'd be seen as weak. No matter how high up the corporate ladder a woman makes it, she can't escape the fact that she needs to meet society's expectations of women and femininity, lest the men around her with more power deride her for it.

Tsunoda, too, obviously has to act like how a man in power expects her to act. Super cutesy and always focusing on the man and how good the man is. She uses that to her advantage, to get out of doing work, so she might technically be coming out ahead, but it's still at the cost of participating in and further supporting anti-feminist ideals.

Unfortunately, the episodes we watched for part 2 of Genshiken really solidified its place in the list of shows that is not for me. Regardless, I do still want to try and give it a fair shake for analysis like I did with part 1. I thought it interesting how the first episode with them having a booth at the comic fest related to our reading and lecture about the concepts of culture vs. shadow culture. Shadow culture is something you amass not with the primary intention of monetary gain or anything commercial like that. But Haraguchi exists, and that's exactly what he tries to do. He tries to sell the Genshiken group on the idea of commercialization and monetary success, and everyone, even his connections, hates him for it. I think this is the show's way of saying that you are not an otaku, you are not actually a fan of the show, if your reasons for participating in fandom match Haraguchi's: purely commercial, and not in it out of love for the media.

The rest of part 2 focuses on female otaku culture, particularly with Ogiue, an otaku obsessed with BL. Tamaki Saito and our previous lecture video for part 1 argue that otaku do not, as is often claimed, confuse fiction with reality. But I would not say Ogiue is a good example of that at all... if anything, I would argue that she would imply that otaku do confuse fiction with reality. Yes, she did turn her fantasies about Sasahara and Madarame into a more generic BL story, but it did still start with her fantasizing about them, the real versions of them. She thinks to herself about how close Madarame and Sasahara have been and maybe their secret gay relationship is the reason for that, and thinks about which of them is the uke and which is the seme. That is not an example of separating fiction and reality, that is just using two real people for your fetishization and assuming your fantasy is the truth.

The rest of the episodes were more bearable than that, at least. I think the depictions of the American girls are obviously exaggerated but that I think is at least the point. It struck me as trying to showcase how Japan perceives how America perceives Japan and its otaku culture and how many people in the west who call themselves otaku don't actually realize what "true" otaku culture is either.