#staticmaid

The specific term "cyber angel" only has one significant appearance in pop culture (though it is a very commonly used concept in generic cyber-core media), and that appearance is in the anime-card-game franchise, Yu-Gi-Oh. Vox's rally suit + cyber angel wings are really similar in structure and colour palette to standard duel discs in Yu-Gi-Oh, and the swirlies he displays on the screens (rectangular, like the cards) remind me of the cards in the face-down position.

"Cyber Angel" is the name of Alexis Rhodes' deck in Yu-Gi-Oh GX and Arc-V. The Cyber Angel monsters are all light-type and mechanically themed, based on figures that can be found in Hinduism and Buddhism, related religions in which the symbol of the lotus rising from the murky depths to blossom in the heavens is core; this symbol reflects Vox's attempt to get up to heaven in season 2.

My friend says the Yu-Gi-Oh connection is projection, and it probably is, but I can't unsee it.

This will come back to East Asia/Japan and also Emily in a sec, walk with me:

In Hinduism, there exists a triple-deity of supreme divinity (which the Vees' sought to be). Amongst this trio is a blue-skinned god, Vishnu. The other blue-skinned deities in Hinduism are his avatars. However, in Buddhism, Vishnu is not an ultimate divine, and rather associated with or seen as sourced from Avalokiteśvara, who the Japanese know as Kannon, and I, as a Chinese person, know as Guanyin – the multiform bodhisattva, famed for ultimate compassion, "the one who hears the cries of the world". And Vox and the Vees aren't quite ultimate divinities, are they?

And in East Asian Mahayana (our form of Buddhism), Guanyin is most commonly depicted as female. As for divine female characters with deep compassion for humanity, including for Vox, I would say Emily fits the bill. She helps numerous sinners without hesitation and, despite getting struck by Vox, is the one who inspires the overlords to use their powers to destroy the Might of Lilith and absolve Vox of that sin, even willing to use the last of her strength to achieve it. The song she sings is 'Hear My Hope'... Guanyin is the one who hears all....

I will be exploring Emily as Guanyin in my next essay for an in-depth prediction of her relationship with Vox and the Vees. But I'll leave it there for now, rather than getting into all the religious parallels, just to keep this post to viewing Vox through a Japan-centric lens.

Let's also talk about Vox's pet:

Japanese engineers often try to imbue their robots with kokoro (心) – heart, spirit, human essence, not by making them human-like, but through the 'personality' that emerges when they do something unexpected. This is a phenomenon and concept I learned about in my studies in relation to Aibo, created by Sony, which was the world's first robot dog companion to be put on the market in the late 90s. The first robot dog was actually made in 1940s America, but was never sold due to a lack of interest. Aibo, on the other hand, was incredibly popular in Japan, and the first 5000 models sold out in twenty minutes.

Where the other pets in the show are organic demons, Vox dotes on his robo-shark, Shok.Wav, like a puppy, although he looks like a cold killing machine! I think it's an apt representation of the Japanese idea of a robot having its own kokoro.

So now that we know Vox is a seasoned weeb, let's talk about his relationship to Niffty:

Niffty and Vox are connected by the fact that they both died in the 50s, were close associates of Alastor and are the main characters to invoke anime-style visuals (as aforementioned with Vox, and Niffty's 'Clean It Up' sequence).

And I didn't know anything about B-Movies, but upon looking into it, I absolutely think you're right here!!!

In regards to B-Movies, Niffty's influence will have declined with Vox, the TV demon's, rise in hell, mirroring how B-Movie budgets began going to TV productions in the 50s. I believe, in a sense, Alastor taking Niffty on (presumably after Vox) is a parallel to Vox teaming up with Valentino; they are both insect demons and overlords of film; they also play the same role in the finale epilogues, where they are being interviewed as heroes on the news, despite not having acted altruistically. The two pairs are opposites: TV and blockbusters are on the up, radio and B-movies are headed towards obsolescence.

With American anxieties about technology and nuclear advancements during the Cold War, many B-Movies of the era were of the sci-fi genre, which aligns with Vox's cyber futurist theming. For some reason, it seems a lot were about sea monsters specifically? I'm not too sure why, but again, that pairs well with Vox, and I think it's reasonable to assume there's a connection between these two overlords, given their mediums and overlapping eras.

I believe that what you are talking about with Japan using kawaii culture to rebrand post-war is basically the core of Niffty's character design. Her love of 'bad boys', I think, is a cheeky reference to Imperial Japan's war crimes and their fellow Axis powers' leaders like Hitler and Mussolini. It was really cringe and random to me without context, but I also believe this is what Husk is referencing when he says "you don't even want to know what her deal is", because the Axis powers' crimes are generally agreed to be the worst horrors committed in the modern era. Her magnetism to Baxter may also be inspired by the human experimentation of Imperial Japan? But, of course, Niffty is an adorable "little darling", so if you aren't aware that she's meant to be from 1950s Japan, let alone know the history, none of this would come up.

And that is exactly how Japan's cool, kawaii, pacifist, small island nation rebrand functioned in the real world. This rebrand kicked off in the 80s and, along with stuff like Hello Kitty, included a soap opera, 'Oshin', which was distributed at no cost outside of Japan. And this also coincides with the beginning of the second wind for TV with MTV's 'Video Killed the Radio Star'... And yeah, soap operas are also dipping into Vox's realm there. The era where Alastor picked up Niffty may very well have been post-80s, when he was diminished in influence, and perhaps he chose Niffty because she had been connected to Vox in some way.

Additionally, both Vox and Niffty will have lived through WW2 and America's occupation of Japan, under which the country was prohibited the 'hard-power' of having a military, which influenced their reliance on soft power. However, during the Cold War, the US sought to strengthen Japan as an ally due to its proximity to the communist uprising in China.

They've had like 1.5 interactions, that being him calling her poor in s2e3 as he and Velvette leave for Dante's Inferno (lol), and in the season 1 finale, he reacts positively to her killing Adam, as well as having a wicked grin while she stands spooked in front of the cameras. I imagine either they've had some dealings in the past and, as you say, he is the reason that she bugs out (heh) when on camera... or Vox may be trying to befriend her going forward as others rise up as antagonists?? It doesn't feel forecasted within the show to me, so I'm inclined to agree with you that it was in the past; however, I still think it is subtle foreshadowing...

We don't have any Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, North Korean, etc., characters in the cast to represent America's enemies in the Cold War, but we possibly do have a Cuban who is going to be a problem next season, and has some friction brewing with the media overlord that he claims not to know.

Vox alludes to Valentino being from a Latino-Caribbean background by referring to Spanish as an island language, and I've discussed in some detail in this post that, being from Florida, Val seems to embody a lot of famous traits of the city, Miami, and that could likely extend to a Cuban background.

Cuba is a communist nation that has been treated quite brutally by the United States (they are going through an awful crisis right now because of sanctions). I don't at all think Vox and Valentino's relationship is going to be as extreme as the real-life conflict, but it's possible that some Cold War-type dynamic could play out here before they reconcile, where Vox pursues Niffty as an ally against an unleashed Val. Furthermore, that scene where Vox is grinning at Niffty is framed so that Val is in the background.

And I think the conflict, which I will also get into in my next essay, will have to do with Zeezi. As I've already said, I believe her role will increase going forward, but I see Val trying to make an ally of her to make a highly expensive blockbuster, as he texts Angel Dust about. Because he is now the CEO, he does not need to ask Vox's permission to use the funds to make it, so I don't see why he wouldn't.

With the new CEO allied with someone new and deeply losing the plot (and the company's stock value!!!), I can see the other Vees needing to come up with an emergency scheme and get some new allies of their own.

Velvette was paired up to battle Niffty in the s2 finale, and is shown harassing her with an emoji in s2e3. So they've interacted too, and I believe they could have an interesting dynamic.

Going back to your main question about Japanese media and its incredible strength as soft power, "Cool Japan" as an official soft power concept was modelled after "Cool Britannia", the culturally and economically thriving 90s UK, which Velvette, having died in the 2000s, embodies. Meanwhile, these were 'Lost Years' of economic recession for Japan; in that sense, Velvette represents something aspirational for Niffty, which may have already been gestured to in how she fawns over the doll's beauty.

Additionally, Anglophilia is a kind of odd phenomenon in Japan, which is quite significant and has its historical roots in the same events that sowed the seeds for the brutality of Imperial Japan.

Following the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire was the largest in the world. The Western colonial powers eventually tried their luck in East Asia. As I understand the history (and my conclusions are very debatable, I just want to make that clear), due to their experiences with Imperial China, Japan saw the writing on the wall with the Westerners' arrival and took a 'can't beat 'em, join 'em' approach.

China, meanwhile, was ignorantly dismissive of European colonialism, likely projecting their own conquering philosophies onto the rest of the world and was steamrolled in their unpreparedness. Britain, in particular, went toe to toe with Imperial China in the Opium Wars and occupied Hong Kong in their victory, which sparked what is known as the 'Century of Humiliation'. China, Korea and Japan were subject to unequal treaties from the Western colonial powers (with the initial coercive treaty coming from Britain's defeat of China).

The Meiji Restoration saw the formation of Imperial Japan, which followed the West's lead in subjecting Korea to unequal treaties. After their victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War, which resulted in Japanese control of Taiwan, they convinced the Western powers that Japan was too powerful to enforce unequal treaties on. This emulation of the Western colonial forces as a survival tactic began the spiral that would culminate in the atrocities Imperial Japan would commit against their neighbouring nations during WW2. In 1902, an official Anglo-Japanese alliance was formed, which is where the anglophilia started.

Saying all this to say, whatever wicked things we see Velvette do in the future, it is likely that Niffty will be on board, or inspired by it. That's also very in character for her, but so far her focus seems to be on her 'bad boys'.

The mid-2000s, an era associated with Velvette, is when the concept of 'Cool Japan', while not yet cemented as a government initiative as it would be in the 2010s, had another boom. Anime was rapidly increasing in international popularity via localised dubs e.g. 4Kids being shown on TV channels (hi Vox) like the Toonami block on Cartoon Network, which would eventually lead to anime becoming as ubiquitous as it is today.

Furthermore, magical girl anime stemmed originally from the 'cute witch' genre. It has inspired the creation of successful Western magical girl shows (PowerPuff Girls, Winx & W.I.T.C.H), as well as shifting the direction of fashion dolls' aesthetics, moving very far away from Barbie's semi-realism, to huge heads and huge eyes, akin to anime proportions, particularly the slight-nosed Bratz, which I have compared Velvette to on countless occasions, largely because of the line coming out in the 2000s, dominating by being a big diversity shake-up on Barbie's branding.

Velvette is, of course, a witch, as the magical girl genre stems from, and her powers resemble those of various magical girls.

I also have some musings on Velvette's doll body having similarities to cyber angels/cyborgs, as depicted in sci-fi anime like 'Battle Angel Alita', but I'll need to watch and investigate more before I can really say anything about that.

I haven't thought much about her dynamic with Niffty at all, but ultimately, it seems there could be some connection between Velvette and Niffty's characters as embodiments of their eras, too.

I'm not really sure what role Alastor plays in this anymore, but it's possible that, since he is not at the hotel, Husk and Niffty will basically act independently of him going forward, unless he needs them for something.

I have talked about the cultural relationship between Valentino, Husk and Alastor before, and in my next essay, I will be discussing why I think Lucifer will act as Valentino's foil in the next season (as 'daddy' figures with opposite styles of abuse: obsession vs neglect).

In the promo card created for the latest con, the characters selected don't correlate with the cast members present at the con. Instead, a configuration we are yet to see, Angel Dust, Husk, Alastor and Lucifer, are at the table. While Husk and Angel make perfect sense... why RadioApple? Alastor is a fan favourite, but I feel that probably Vox would be first pick if this was just supposed to be a fun card, since he has had extreme prominence in the merch and he's another fan fave.

What I think is happening here is that Alastor's established bone to pick with Lucifer is still very much an alive thought among the creative team, because they're both relevant in season 3, despite our focus shifting to Angel Dust and Valentino, who haven't really interacted with them thus far. Likewise, Lucifer is yet to have meaningful interactions with HuskerDust, so I think it speaks to a continued relevance that will come from a B-plot, involving his relationship with MC Charlie, in which he is a foil to Valentino.

With that being said, I don't see why Niffty would get called upon by Alastor. Therefore, I think it's possible that there will be a little shift around where the Vees and RadioTrio may temporarily swap bugs in some fashion: Val for Niffty. She is a real hero, where Val is a fraud, and she is very cute and adorable, and she is very popular, as shown in s2e1, where people are begging her to stab her and such. She would make a decent ally for another "propaganda parade" (thanks, Alastor).

Additionally, she will know how to make an ambitious production on a budget as the B-movie overlord, whereas Val will not. Perhaps her cockroach shows could be foreshadowing for her lending her expertise to actually get Val's monster movie finished without bleeding more resources?