Otaple 1/2

After watching the last of the Digimon Tri movies, I got thinking about how there is an absurd amount of sequels, spin-offs and reboots airing this season.

These are just the TV series I’m aware of, so things like the Digimon, Conan, and Code Geass movies aren’t included above. 

In the current anime environment where low-risk single cour shows have become the norm and so many people question the stability of the industry, its nice to see so many franchises performing well enough to justify extensions. (Whether those extensions are necessary or not is a discussion for another day.)

For something like the fandom around Digimon Tri, it wasn’t entirely about the movies themselves. Sure, everyone wanted to talk about whether or not the movies lived up to expectations after watching them, but it was more that people were just eager to talk about Digimon in general again. The Digimon fandom was suddenly relevant thanks to these new movies and it gave fans reason to go back and remember why they liked the original so much in the first place.

It seems that so many fans are obsessed with keeping up with what’s brand new as opposed to looking back at what was enjoyable to watch. It feels like this season has given everyone a chance to remember some of the older anime that made us fans in the first place. I think the power of that nostalgia isn’t something that should be shrugged off. 

Sequels and the like are so often criticized as cash grabs or signs of running out of original ideas but even when those criticisms are fair, a sequel still helps to keep our favorite franchises from falling into obscuring and helps create new fans too. At the very least sequels give us a reminder of stories we used love and give us an excuse to start loving them again.

The 1967 Princess Knight anime is an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s second rendition of the manga Princess Knight. While the anime’s plot diverges from its source material, the premise remains the same: To inherit the throne of Silverland, the princess has been raised and presented to the public as a prince. Only her close family and servants know she is really a girl. However, the evil Duke Duralumin seeks to reveal the secret of the “prince”, so that his son can claim the throne instead.

Princess Knight is falsely acclaimed by many as the first shoujo manga. As academic Deborah Shamoon puts it, “to single out Tezuka alone is to ignore the work of many other artists in the 1950s and 1960s who created manga for girls such as Takahashi Makoto whose visual style is much closer to subsequent trends in shoujo manga than Tezuka’s.”

Indeed, the original Princess Knight manga shares little resemblance to modern shoujo manga, beyond the fact that it features a female lead in a fairytale setting. To solely credit Tezuka with the beginnings of shoujo manga is to commit an injustice to Junichi Nakahara, Rune Naito, the aforementioned Takahashi Makoto and many other artists whose influence on the modern shoujo genre is more direct than that of Tezuka’s. Thus, it is much more practical to examine Princess Knight as a work from the God of Manga, rather than as a precursor to any modern genres.

Another common misconception about the Princess Knight franchise is that the anime is actually about the titular character. True enough the story follows Prince(ss) Knight, as she is referred to in the English dub of the anime. (From here forth, I will be referring to her as Sapphire, name she is given in the manga.)  However, Sapphire isn’t always the focus of what’s going on and, as I will address later, her character lacks the depth one might expect. Her limelight is frequently stolen by various villains as well as her cherubic sidekick, referred to as Choppy in the English dub.

Choppy, a genital-less angel in Robin Hood attire, stars in both the opening and the ending theme of the series and has entire episodes dedicated to his antics. He serves as the child companion character, found throughout many of Tezuka’s works. (And he is just as annoying and creepy as his fellow munchkins.) Believe it or not, Choppy is crucial to the plot of Princess Knight.

The real reason behind Sapphire’s boyish mannerisms is due to Choppy causing a mix up when the princess was born. Instead of receiving a red heart meant for girls, Sapphire received an additional blue heart meant for boys. Thus, implying her masculine behavior isn’t solely a matter of nurture, but an accident on the part of heaven. Tezuka’s attempt at explaining gender with a color-coded binary, bestowed by a divine patriarch, fails to address the complexities of gender in any meaningful way.

Gender refers to the internalized social expectations for appearance and behavior that align with the societal roles associated with a person’s perceived sex. Sex is meant to dictate gender and gender is meant to portray sex. But by virtue of being comprised of two-dimensional lines, the characters of Princess Knight have no biological sex from which to derive their gender. Anime characters are described by scholar Susan Napier as “stateless” and while Napier uses this word to describe characters’ lack of national identity, I believe the same idea can be applied to describe characters’ lack of biological sex.

It is through suspension of disbelief that we believe drawings represent human beings and all the biological fanfare that comes with being human, when in reality anime characters are effectively “stateless” in regards to sex and all other genetic states. Anime characters must be portrayed performing a gender that implies their sex or have their canonical sex outright stated, else the audience is left to speculate. With no state to tether to the concept of gender, the anime characters of Princess Knight dismiss human biology almost entirely. Princess Knight makes no real attempt to suspend the audience’s disbelief that its characters have realistic biological qualities to begin with.

Aside from Sapphire being born from her mother, there are no allusions to biological sex in the series. Keeping in mind that this is a program made for television in the 1960s, Duke Duralumin cannot publicly strip Sapphire to reveal her secret to all of Silverland and the families watching at home. By extension, he cannot use the sound of her voice, her measurements, or her theoretical period as evidence against her claim to the throne. (After all this wouldn’t be a very long anime if all it took for Duralumin’s plans to succeed was a single pair of bloody tights.)

So instead of the more obvious routes for determining if Sapphire is a girl or boy, the villains of the series use more roundabout methods such as asking the opinions of ghosts and magic mirrors. There’s also things like magic pens that would make Sapphire write down that she is really a girl as well as a topical cream that turns blue when it touches a boy. Through these creative methods, Tezuka consistently portrays gender as something supernatural rather than something sociological.

If we step away from Tezuka’s interpretation of gender and instead use a more contemporary understanding of gender such as that popularized by feminist philosophers like Judith Butler, we can gain a better understanding of Sapphire’s character.

Our genders are not innate. They are the result of how we have learned to habitually react to our social environments. The gender we develop over time then informs our identities which serve to reinforce our habitual behavior. When gender is “performed” it is not a conscious act where everyone within proximity is aware of the façade. Gender is a constant series of small behaviors that are meant to go unnoticed and if ever noticed, be dismissed as inherent qualities inseparable from our sense of self, rather than the result of the rigorous teachings we absorb from birth through socialization.

Due to her circumstances Sapphire learned to present herself as either a boy or a girl depending on who she is around. She has developed two behavioral personas of conflicting gender: the Princess whom is known within the walls of the palace, and the Prince whom is shown to the outside world. When interacting with anyone outside of her private circle, Sapphire wears tights, a large brimmed hat, carries a sword and is read as masculine. (It’s important to recognize that attributes associated with any gender are highly dependent on societal context. Silverland’s setting is inspired by Medieval Europe and so within that context it’s understood that Sapphire’s daily attire is to be read as masculine within her society, even though her lack of pants and flamboyant hat would be read as feminine in a modern American context.)

While presenting her persona of the Prince to the outside world, sapphire is never unsure of her true status as a girl. She simply portrays a boy as necessity dictates, like many real-life women have had to do throughout history. It is because of her identity as a girl that Sapphire is so desperately committed to convincing others of the Prince’s masculinity. As the Prince she cannot brush off accusations of being unmanly, for they could raise suspicions and endanger her secret and by extension her kingdom. When fearful her secret could be discovered, and her country’s future could be at risk, she consciously attempts to act manlier. She competes in sports, challenges adult men to duels, and even starts bar fights in order to prove that she can perform feats that girls cannot. (Because obviously girls aren’t capable of any of those things, or at least those are things girls are not expected to do in Sapphire’s society.) It’s Sapphire’s ambition and rowdiness that successfully keep suspicion of her girlhood at bay. But by repeatedly performing the act of the Prince, Sapphire internalizes the masculine behaviors she puts on and they become a part of personality.

Ironically, Sapphire’s feats of toughness only prove to the audience that a girl can indeed do all the things she claims to others are proof that she must be a boy to her fellow countrymen. However, Sapphire’s accomplishments do nothing to challenge perceptions of women as it’s made clear to the audience that Sapphire is a very special exception and not the rule.

All the other women portrayed in the series fall neatly into the categories of: wicked witches, wise mothers, or daddy’s girls. For example, the characters of Queen Icicle, Sapphire’s mother and Zenda embody each of these categories respectively. These stereotype-based character’s do nothing to convince the audience that femininity has the capacity for competence. This unfortunate lack of depth to Princess Knight’s female characters even extends to Sapphire when she embodies her private persona of the Princess known within the palace walls as Princess Knight in the English dub.

In a hidden chamber connected to her bedroom is a wardrobe of wigs and dresses that Sapphire dresses up in when no one is around. In the anime, this hidden wardrobe is treated as an infatuation of Sapphire’s. Her servants grieve for Sapphire’s situation, wishing she could be a princess all the time, implying that Sapphire’s performance of femininity in the secret chamber is somehow a persona closer to her true self. It’s apparent that the servant’s view on Sapphire’s inner desires is shared by Tezuka himself. Tezuka wants the audience to pity a girl that has responsibilities beyond playing dress up, and that a girl who cannot be a princess destined to marry a prince is one allotted a cruel fate.

When Sapphire takes on her persona of the Princess all her personality traits fade to emphasize her beauty. As a Prince Sapphire doesn’t qualify as beautiful, but after quickly changing into a dress and a wig, she is suddenly beautiful enough to make a foreign prince, by the name of Prince Frank in the English dub, fall in love with her during a Cinderella-esque night of dancing.

Prince Frank only falls for Sapphire once he perceives her as a girl. When he initially meets her as the Prince of Silverland the two share a rivalry where they compete with one another as equals. When Frank perceives Sapphire as a boy he fights alongside her or tries to outdo her, but once he perceives Sapphire as a girl he becomes smitten and goes out of his way to discourage Sapphire from attending the battlefield, even when her own country in on the line. As her love interest, Prince Frank compliments Sapphire’s good looks above any other quality.

In a Snow White inspired episode, the mirror on the wall deems Sapphire’s Princess Persona the fairest of them all, emphasizing that Sapphire’s sole accomplishment as the Princess is her beauty. A shallow and stereotypical beauty, which is dependent on her state of dress and the opinion of those around her. What’s more, Sapphire’s beauty is purely due to her status as the heroine. Being a character on the side of good, Sapphire is spared of any imperfections that are found on the faces of the series’ various villainesses. Sapphire’s Princess persona is defined as a character solely by her looks, despite her literally being the same person and having the same face as Silverland’s Prince.

The audience is meant to sympathize more with Sapphire because she has the two traits deemed most desirable in women by patriarchal society, young and attractive. (Unfortunately, ugly female protagonists in anime are all too rare.) One of the most common mistakes made by men writing female characters is that they can forget women have their own perspective from which they look at things, as opposed to their existence revolving around being looked at.

At the halfway point of the series, Silverland’s sexist laws regarding the inheritance of the throne are changed and Sapphire’s secret is revealed to the public with no consequence. Once her secret is out, the show drops the surrounding conflict, and Sapphire finally represents a non-traditional take on gender within her own society, at least in appearances. Sapphire no longer must pretend to be a boy and begins to go by the title Princess full time, yet she doesn’t change her daily attire. When venturing into foreign countries where her reputation doesn’t precede her, she is still referred to as a boy. She doesn’t correct those around her, perhaps out of habit. But as for Sapphire’s masculine behavior, particularly her acts of heroism in combat, she finds a new persona to replace the Prince.

The Phantom Knight is a masked swordsman Sapphire developed in order to outwit a villain’s scheme. But even after the Phantom Knight is no longer needed, Sapphire continues to dress up and fight as him. Instead of consistently defying the sexism she encounters Princess Knight will humbly obey her orders to leave the battlefield on account of the fact that she is a girl and the Phantom Knight will miraculously appear to fight in her place. Indeed, Sapphire finds a type of individual freedom in seamlessly slipping from one persona to another to best fit her purposes without causing upset, but this does nothing to actually liberate Sapphire from her obligation to keep parts of herself a secret from everyone around her.

It’s no longer her country’s throne on the line but her reputation as a girl who upholds the role given to her. Sapphire’s clandestine heroism as the Phantom Knight is an outlet for when she doesn’t want to accept the social constraints of being perceived as a girl, but it’s not a remedy for the narrowminded people around her responsible for those constraints.

Sapphire continues to masquerade as a boy with the only real difference being that her two genders have traded spaces. She now presents her girl persona to the public and keeps her boy persona to herself. The Phantom Knight takes on the burdens of adventure, combat, justice and heroism so that Princess Knight can tend to her romance with Prince Frank, which she can freely pursue now that she’s perceived as a girl in the public eye. And as Sapphire displayed so adamantly in the first half of the series, girls are incapable of feats performed by a man such as the Phantom Knight.

With her new secret identity, Sapphire’s gendered personas are more cleanly split than before, and traditional depictions of gender are never really challenged by Sapphire or the series as a whole. After all, what Tezuka wants for Sapphire is not for her to have a secret identity or to lead the life of a prince/knight, but for her to ultimately take on the traditional goal of womanhood, marriage.

At the end of the series the final fight for Silverland’s future becomes dependent on a magic axe. Even during the most critical point of saving Silverland, when Sapphire is to use the axe to save her country, Prince Frank tries to take the weapon away from her as he deems it unfit for a girl to handle. Sapphire must take it back by force before she can run off and save her kingdom. Once the conflict is over, Choppy takes Sapphire’s blue boy heart with him as he returns to heaven. With her canonical source of masculine behavior gone, Sapphire marries Prince Frank. It’s heavily implied that she never takes on the persona of the Phantom Knight now that her country is at peace.

While the audience is supposed to be happy for Sapphire who has found love and can finally live the fantasy once confined to a secret chamber in the palace, it feels more like Tezuka has only made Sapphire finally submit to a traditional female gender role he always intended her for. Sapphire’s conservative ending is actually the second of the anime. It closely follows the solution to Zenda’s character.

Zenda is the daughter of Satan who after daring to show kindness toward a human boy, Zenda is punished and placed in an irreversible situation where she has lost all magical powers, cannot return to her family nor live on her own. The last we see of Zenda is her walking off in to the distance with a boy she barely knows. Sapphire’s and Zenda’s fates where they must trade power for a male partner parallel each other and make for a dissatisfying, if not depressing, ending to series.

Again, Princess Knight ultimately exemplifies a very simple view of gender, where once Sapphire trades her sword for a bouquet, all her stereotypical qualities of masculinity are discarded and the act of doing so is easy and magical.

It feels odd to compare Princess Knight, with its cliché fairytale wedding as its finale and ultimate lack of commentary on gender, to other manga and anime that properly tackle the complexities of crossdressing and gender. One such series that delves into gender as one of its main themes and is frequently brought up in conversations about Princess Knight is Rose of Versailles. The comparisons between these two specific series often feel misguided since Prince Knight is much less a story about crossdressing and gender performance as it is a story that happens to include those things. And yet many people not only compare Princess Knight to Rose of Versailles but even go as far to claim Princess Knight to be Rose of Versailles’ spiritual predecessor. This claim is most likely due to the similarities these two works share in their premises. In Rose of Versailles, the Commander of the Royal Guards fails to produce a male heir, so he decides to give his daughter the name Oscar and raise her as a boy.

Beyond their initial setups, the two series have little else in common. Oscar’s sex is not kept a secret. She was raised as a man, acts as a man, but is still indeed a woman. So all of Oscar’s accomplishments are as a woman, thus bending the gender expectations assigned to women, and ultimately defying the limitations placed on women by their social role in 18th century France. When it comes to Oscar’s masculine behaviors, Rose of Versailles argues nurture as the source while Princess Knight canonically argues nature.

Sapphire does not take on adventures and face danger because she was raised as a prince but because she was mistakenly given the heart of a boy. Tezuka’s simplistic approach to Sapphire’s identity means that her gender, despite being the crux of the story, it isn’t very crucial to Sapphire’s character. In a story like Rose of Versailles, swapping the protagonist’s gender would change the story entirely. But in Princess Knight, you could change the storyline to be about a male prince who happens to like dressing as a girl, but the secret could shame him out of the throne and the plot would play virtually the same. Sapphire doesn’t defy gender roles the way Oscar does. Sapphire is merely trying to uphold two roles at the same time.

As previously mentioned there is a distinct lack of sex and by extension sexuality in Princess Knight. Sapphire’s struggle with gender is never sexual. Where as in Rose of Versailles Oscar’s troubled relationships are dripping with sexual tension. Part of this is because Oscar’s struggle with gender is an internal one. She must struggle with her own self-image and how that image will affect the relationships she wants and the duties she must uphold. But Sapphire’s struggles in the Princess Knight anime are almost completely external. She only fears her secret being outed because of the threat of external backlash that’s presumed to follow. Sapphire is never unsure of who she is and what she wants, she just has to wait for the right time to reveal such things. Much like crediting Princess Knight as the first shoujo, crediting it as the spiritual predecessor to Rose a Versailles is a stretch at best.

Overall, I believe Princess Knight’s reputation over-hypes the anime series. I don’t think Princess Knight is a good introduction to Tezuka’s work, it’s certainly not his best, and I don’t think its aged very well to boot. (I think Black Jack in any of its iterations is a better place to start for those uninitiated to the God of Manga.)

Masaaki Yuasa and Ping Pong The Animation  

I hate anime directed by Masaaki Yuasa. I hate his shallow takes on sex and violence. I hate his shloopy art style. I hate his poorly written characters. EXCEPT for this one show.

Only one work by this man has failed to disappoint me, Ping Pong the Animation is an extraordinary anime on all fronts.

The animation highlights the beauty of hand drawn style while cleverly and discretely incorporating digital elements.

This show is gorgeous. In particular I love the backgrounds, usage of negative space and visual metaphor.

It is a great entry in the sports anime genre. It does a great job of  working off of a base of sports anime tropes but still presenting them in an interesting way. A lot of this is thanks to the ebb and flow of the show’s overall pacing. The cool down moments between matches does an excellent job of showing how each character’s attitude changes depending on the situation.

I have a lot of issues with Yuasa’s work as a whole. One is his obsession with grotesque imagery. It only leverages his wobbly, gunky animation style and rarely has any point beyond making you feel nauseous. 

But in Ping Pong, Yuasa takes a break from his favorites of sexual violence, and human excrement. Instead Ping Pong focuses on sweat, tears, and intensity of human expression. 

Yuasa’s work is always heavily driven by a male perspective and stereotypical masculine ideals. As a result he can’t write female characters worth shit! 

But in Ping Pong, he finally finds a remedy where he just doesn’t have any important female characters. Ping Pong is a great example of something with no chance of passing the Bechdel test. And this is not a mark against it. Fewer female characters isn’t something I would normally vouch for but Ping Pong is indeed a special exception. 

Is it disappointing that if you look a wide range of media over time that there’s a clear lack of female characters let alone well written ones? Of fucking course it is! Does this make an individual work such as Ping Pong sexist for not shoehorning in female characters? No! 

Ping Pong’s lack of female characters doesn’t make the show itself sexist, just male focused. This does contribute to a trend of media failure to represent women but for a show like Ping Pong that’s about a the male division of sport, it makes sense for men to be the focus of the story. And I don’t think any its entertainment value is lost from that.

I swore off watching anything with Yuasa’s name attached a few years ago just because I so consistently reaped no joy from consuming his work. 

But Ping Pong the Animation is the one and only exception. 

Ping Pong the Animation is definitely worth your time.

Part 1 Shinichi Watanabe and The Wallflower

Ever wonder why the scout named after the planet closest to the sun is water themed? Or why Sailor Jupiter’s lighting is green instead of yellow?

Just like in English, the names for the days of the week in Japanese are meant to coincide with the names of the planets (or to be more specific the seven celestial bodies that the Romans thought were planets). 

“Wait, the days of the week in English are named after planets?”  Yes. I assure you.

(The Japanese kanji representing the seven days of the week beginning with Sunday).

In Japanese the kanji for the days of the week are also shared with the same corresponding celestial bodies.

日 - the kanji that literally means “sun” (but usually represents “day”) 月 - the kanji for “moon” (and “month”) 火 – the kanji for “fire” which is used in the Japanese name for Mars: 火星 水 – the kanji for “water” which is used in the Japanese name for Mercury: 水星 木 – the kanji for “tree” which is used in the Japanese name for Jupiter: 木星 金 – the kanji for “gold” which is used in the Japanese name for Venus: 金星 土 – the kanji for “soil” which is used in the Japanese name for Saturn: 土星

These kanji are usually color coded in popular media to reflect their literally meanings. (There are some variations. 月 is sometimes purple or blue instead of silver.  木 is sometimes brown instead of green. 土 is sometimes black or purple.) For the most part there is a strong association between each kanji and the color most associated with their meanings.

日 - sun, yellow 月 - moon, silver 火 – fire, red 水 – water, blue 木 – tree, green 金 – gold, gold (usually an orange-y yellow) 土 – soil, brown

So now if we look at the Inner Sailor Scouts and each planet they represent, we can see the same color trend.

Mercury is blue, Mars is red, Jupiter is green, Venus is Gold/Orange. 

(It’s also worth noting that Sailor Moon’s hair was originally meant to be silver but was changed to blonde in order to make her stand out more on the manga covers and thus resulting in the color silver being reserved for Queen Serenity.)

The Inner Sailor Scouts are an interesting mix of Western and Eastern planetary themes. The scouts take their names from the English language names for the planets but take their colors from the Japanese kanji associated with them. Sailor Mercury’s and Mars’ powers are derived form the kanji representing their planets, water and fire respectively. But Sailor Jupiter’s and Venus’ powers are based on the Roman mythological figures their planets are named after.

Bonus:

Sailor Saturn’s color scheme also follows the same pattern where 土 is commonly associated with brown, black and purple.

Those who have seen the 2011 TV anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica will recall the story’s emphasis on separate realities induced by alternative timelines and the endless possibilities created thus.

Like many other components of the Madoka Magica media mix, the Magia Record phone game released last year takes advantage of the flexible setting laid out by the anime. The game portrays magical girls being drawn to the same city in order to team up and fight endlessly for piles of in-game currency. The game takes place sometime before the events of the TV anime’s first episode. (In other words, Homura still has her braids.) And so the Madoka Kaname of Magia Record is the kind yet naive girl from the beginning of the anime. She has ended up contracted with Kyubey and fighting alongside her fellow magical girls with a cheerful disposition.

Magia Report is an online companion comic for the Magia Record. The comic is a lighthearted commentary that pokes fun at the game as it updates with new characters and features.

Translated Magia Report Excerpt

The goofy and self-aware style of Magia Report isn’t new territory for the Madoka Magicafranchise. The 2012 spin-off manga Puella Magi Homura Tamura (available in English from Yen Press.) is about Homura’s adventures through various timelines and the many, many (comedic) possibilities they hold.

Magia Report simply follows in the stylistic footsteps of Homura Tamura, even when it comes to how the heroine Madoka is portrayed. Throughout the various timelines Homura transverses, she encounters a practically infinite amount of Madokas along the way. Many of these Madokas have vastly different personalities from the original Madoka that Homura is trying to save.

Madoka-senpai, as she is known in Magia Report, has a heavily divergent personality from the Madokas that are playable in the Magia Record game. Thus creating a comedic contrast perfect for Magia Report’s purposes.

New characters are consistently added to Magia Record’s ever-growing roster. And about a week ago a familiar magical girl became available, Madoka-senpai from Magia Report.

Madoka-senpai’s portrait from Magia Record

Madoka-senpai’s existence was nicely confined to the Magia Report comic strips. But in celebration of the comic’s anniversary, Madoka-senpai was added as a playable magical girl. And so what was initially thought to be an April Fool’s stunt, has become one of the most powerful interpretations of Madoka Kaname.

One major difference between Homura Tamura and Magia Report is that Homura Tamura still takes place within the proper story of the Madoka Magica franchise. Magia Report on the other hand bleeds into the reality. The characters don’t really acknowledge the forth wall but rather fail to heed it. The characters of Magia Report don’t spend their time fighting for their lives like their phone game counterparts. They spend it watching anime and playing games and hanging out much like the real people reading the comic. Their contracts as magical girls aren’t actually enforced and instead they react to the events taking place in reality that are of relevance to them, like game updates and merchandise releases. They do this in a time frame sensitive to our reality.

Translated Excerpt from Magia Report

The world of Magia Report is the closest resemblance within the franchise of our own world. This means Madoka-senpai is the closest resemblance to the theoretical Madoka that would exist in our timeline. Our timeline being one where the Madoka Magica anime and all it’s spin-off content is accessible and Madoka herself can consume it, just as Madoka-senpai has done in the comic. Having watched the anime, Madoka-senpai is fully aware of her fated god status and the powers she possesses because of it. Unlike all the other versions of herself, Madoka-senpai has the omniscience that she is a cartoon character.

So while all the other characters of Magia Record have animations based on the game’s established logic and physics, Madoka-senpai conjures whatever nonsensical attacks she pleases with comical glee. Even her magia animation is a goofy gimmick Madoka-senpai puts on for the players rather than for the sake of the actual battle. (It’s also speculated to be a dig at the game Magia Record is most commonly compared to, Fate/Grand Order, due to its incorporation the sword Excalibur. Thus implying that Madoka-senpai consumes more media from our reality than just that relating to the Madoka Magica franchise.)

Madoka-senpai’s in-game transformation sequence also separates her from the other magical girls. Rather than animated by the same means as all the other magical girls. Madoka-senpai’s transformation is instead filmed. She crosses the boundary into reality, in that her costume change is portrayed with real life thaumatrope filmed in various locations.

Madoka-senpai’s presence as magical girl begins in our own world and once fully transforms she leaves for the world of Magia Record.

Introduced in Magia Report, following suit with Homura Tamura, originating from the iconic anime series and crossing the boundaries between media and reality, Madoka-senpai seems to be Madoka’s most powerful form yet.

A post in which I am upset about cleavage and the suspension of disbelief in an anime from 35 years ago. 

Minor Spoilers for Cat’s Eye

I was really blown away when I started Cat’s Eye, a phantom thief anime from the early 80s. It revolves around a trio of art thief sisters and the male detective that swears to catch them next time! Pulling heavily from Western spy cinema and shoujo romance, it’s adorable and a lot of fun. But the real draw for me was the large cast of female characters and how well they were portrayed.

That was until the second season, when previous design choices get an “upgrade”. The cafe the sisters run gets redesigned along with their burglarizing outfits.

And suddenly boobs are at the center point of every action shot. Even Ai, the youngest sister who is still in high school, gets to trade in her collared jumpsuit for a push up bra. This is a completely logical change in attire for people that are used to getting shot at on a regular basis. 

I guess taking a bullet to the shoulder in season one only made Ai realize that a layer of fabric was basically the same as no protection whatsoever, so why not just go with the sexier option?

I always forgave the impracticality of the waist sashes and high heels in the first season because this is a show where the characters disarm several gunmen at a time with a pile of calling cards. But the blatant spike in fan service is not only really distracting, but also disheartening as it reduces the female characters into sex objects whenever they’re being badass. It’s almost like these sisters were being too awesome for male viewers to feel comfortable so they needed some fan service to help sooth the fear of female characters kicking ass.

Sexing up the main characters is the clear intention of the second season. Every episode begins with an opening where the middle sister, Hitomi, just does various passive poses in a swimsuit/naked for a minute and a half. A lame followup to the original 80s-tastic opening.

I’m really glad that the original outfits from the first season ended up being the iconic ones. 

(Lucky Star is one of many that reference Cat’s Eye’s first season.)  

But I’m sad to say that Cat’s Eye diminishes it’s female cast into fighting fuck toys at the mid-way point. And this unfortunate trend has remained popular in anime over the decades. 

It reminds me of a similar “upgrade” that occurs half way through Bubblegum Crisis 2040, where the female cast have to start wearing their hard suits with nothing underneath. 

And there’s plenty of instances of female characters’ clothing being redesigned just to be more sexy, like when Asuka’s test plugsuit was conveniently transparent in the rebuild movies, or Cutie Honey’s aversion to pants in the 2004 reboot or how Birdy gets less clothes and higher heels in Decode. The only motivation behind these decisions is to increase the sex appeal of female characters despite it having nothing to do with the characters themselves or the situations they’re placed into.

They’re skiing in this shot. 

There is no doubt that Crunchyroll is the best legal streaming option for anime in the US. Their ratio of library size to cost is unbeatable. You almost feel obligated to have a subscription if you’re an anime fan. But over these past few years I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with Crunchyroll as a company.

Crunchyroll is a legitimate way to support the anime industry but Crunchyroll doesn’t specifically support creators. One of the reasons Crunchyroll has become the dominant streaming service for anime is because cut costs when it comes to translation. Unlike a regular home release license, when a show is licensed by Crunchyroll they skip the purchase of song rights. So opening and ending themes go untranslated, resulting in a faster turn around and a more cost efficient product. 

This approach is also applied to credits. Thus embracing a philosophy from fansub culture where the translator promotes its own brand rather than the names of the people that actually created the work. I would love to know the names of directors and animators without using a third party site like MyAnimeList. But when Crunchyroll translates a show, those names are sadly inaccessible to English speakers when the credits roll, presumably to save Crunchyroll some money.

Despite its roots as an illegal fansub site, Crunchyroll has since been acquired by larger media companies and their parent companies include AT&T. This means that as a company, Crunchyroll is against things like net neutrality.

Crunchyroll is no longer a small licensor and is now actively producing anime, putting it on par with something like Netflix rather than its previous competitors like Funimation. Crunchyroll creating its own content, be it actual anime or just weird videos filmed in their office, signals a shift in interests for the company, where Crunchyroll hopes to tell fans what they want rather than letting fans decide for themselves.

Crunchyroll’s marketing power within the American anime community is insane. If Crunchyroll promotes a show enough, it will become a hit regardless of that show’s quality. Crunchyroll is essentially responsible for the current simulcast culture, which values quantity of shows watched on Crunchyroll instead of quality of shows. While this is great for making Crunchyroll money, it’s not so great for fans that want to watch and discuss good shows rather than popular ones.

All that tied in with some negative experiences with customer service and bad interactions with some of the company’s employees at conventions, I’m officially off the pro-Crunchyroll bandwagon. 

I understand that it’s practically impossible to be both anti-Crunchyroll and anti-piracy if you’re living in the US. I don’t think people should pirate instead of using Crunchyroll. But I do think people should understand that there are legal alternatives. Crunchyroll feels like a monopoly at this point but it doesn’t have to.

I am moving to Japan. This means I’m going to be pretty busy and so I’m not sure if I’m going to have as much time to blog as I used to. I want to spend more time offline in the coming year, meaning I won’t be as active on Tumblr or Twitter anymore.

I started this blog to help organize my thoughts and act as an outlet for a passion I could rarely express in person. I’m thankful to everyone who has sent kind comments and interesting opinions my way. Your support has meant a lot.

(There’s no rule saying I can’t take up two days to talk about magical girls right?)

Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise is one of, if not the worst magical girl show I’ve seen. I couldn’t believe it was getting a sequel this year and I felt obligated to watch it. And then I couldn’t believe it when Twin Angel Break was actually a good show.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a great show. I don’t think I would actually recommend it to anyone. But that’s not because it’s a bad story, it’s just because it’s a sequel. It expects the audience to already be familiar with the characters and premise. Twin Angel Break is not good enough to validate sitting through it’s predecessor. 

This year was the release of the Madoka Magica phone game Magia Record. 

It’s region locked to Japan and there’s no official English version. But if you manage to get it on your phone, it’s free to play (with optional in-game purchases of course). Since my husband has a smart phone and I don’t, we just play together on the same account.

In the Magia Record, magical girls are ranked by number of stars 1 to 5 and as of today we have three 5 star magical girls: Madoka Kaname, Ren Isuzu, and Tsuruno Yui.

This isn’t the first Japanese phone game my husband and I have gotten into. After the Show by Rock!! anime came out we viciously played the game it was based on for about a year. Playing Show by Rock!! made me appreciate the anime since it helped in identifying the various character cameos.

But for Magia Record, where the game is based on the anime (and the creators recommend you watch the anime before playing), it’s a different experience. Instead of piecing together who certain characters are, your already attached to the main cast and familiar with the story going in.

I love Madoka Magica and I think Magia Record is a great expansion for the franchise.

The premise is essentially all the magical girls show up to the same city to fight side by side. So basically, it’s awesome and adorable.

There’s a few things I don’t like about it. Some of the art is a little too butt focused for my taste.

(Thankfully, the game let’s you pick which card art is displayed. So I don’t get a face full of loli butt every time I level up Tsuruno.)

And it’s apparent that whoever’s designing the game original magical girls has a mid-drift fetish.

But all in all, it’s a really fun game (and a great way to practice Japanese).

Japanese phone games aren’t for everyone. They are a specific style a gambling and grinding which just isn’t going to appeal to everyone. (There’s also the whole language barrier thing.) But if you liked the Madoka anime, then I recommend you at least check out some of the transformation sequences.

The wiki is a great guide for English users, if you’re getting started with the game.

And if you’re already playing, then I think you should also be reading the official web comic, Magia Report. This tumblr has been keeping up with translations of it.

Konosuba is a fun show and I’m glad it seems to be pretty popular. It’s one of a handful of isekai anime I genuinely like. It does a great job of poking fun at the genre without being a straight up parody. But underneath all its panty thievery and slimy fan service, I really think there’s a positive message underneath. 

Kazuma and his party are not good people, and that’s what makes them so empathetic. They’re just trying to get by and live their lives, one day at a time. All while being a hot mess. And despite having obvious flaws, they still are rewarded for hard work. They still manage to find camaraderie and acceptance within their weird world. No one’s perfect. No one is even close, and that’s okay. 

I have my fingers crossed that we’ll get another season of Konosuba soon. But in the meantime, here’s an AMV that I think does a great job of expressing Konosuba’s themes.