Whoever wrote this episode was some kind of Libertarian.
Like jeez, there are many things I expect to see in an anime, most of an episode being devoted to how paper currency will literally lead to slavery is not one of them.
Which episode was that again?
Also, started watching The Woman called Fujiko MIne.It's definitely a darker take on the Lupin III universe, being asort of Alternate Universe version of how the Lupin III gang met and evntually became the team we know and love. Overall, the tone is more hard boiled and Film Noir-ish, but it still has a good bit of the goofy charm that endeared me to Lupin. I'm 6 episodes in so far andit's pretty good so far, though I have a few complaints. My biggest complaint is how Zenigata is handled in the series. In the past Zenigata is the goofy somewhat incompetent (well, relative to Lupin and the gang. When he's not being compared to Lupin, he's actually somewhat decent) cop chasing after Lupin. Traditionally, he's portrayed as the good cop eternally chasing after Lupin and trying to bring him to justice through honest means. In this series he's much closer to a dirty cop, trading Fujiko's freedom in one episode for sexual favors and trying to shoot Lupin in the back, as well as being kind of misogynistic at points. While it's not out of place for the story this show is trying to tell, it does feel really weird to see Zenigata acting like this. Even worse than Zenigata on the misogyny front is Oscar, a character created for the TV show as Zenigata's lieutenant. He commonly refers to Fujiko as "Spittoon" for her sexual escapades. Honestly Oscar is the worst part of the show. I've been watching the english dub and I'm really enjoying it. With the exception of Michelle Ruff as Fujiko, none of the original voices from the English dub play their characters, but that's to be expected, since it's Funimation doing the dubbing instead of Geneon. Sonny Strait does an excellent job with his interpretation of Lupin, even if Tony Oliver is the definitive Lupin voice in my mind.
* The protagonist is an awful amalgamation of cliches
* it was one of the first anime series to extensively use digital animation (all of the sub fights are done digitally) and said digital animation has aged very poorly
* the dialogue often veers into genuinely laughably awful territory, especially when our protagonist is involved.
Reasons I liked it:
* The bad guy is a very interesting on the whole "mad scientist who wants to destroy mankind" stock character, and he does get some really incredible (if hammy) dialogue
* Mutio (the character I currently have as my avatar) is very wonderfully developed, especially considering the fact that she has no dialogue
* the whole conclusion is a deconstructive take on the whole "let's all be pacifists the only real way to win is not to fight guys!!!" cliche (I hesitate to use that word because TV Tropes but I really feel that it fits here)
* The laughably terrible bits are actually terrible enough to inspire genuine laughter
Deconstruction is a valid term in literary theory, as far as I know, though it's entirely possible TVT may have been applying it too broadly. I actually had heard of the word long before TVT.
I think the general complaint is that the TVTrope page "deconstruction" isn't the same thing as the term "deconstruction" used by formal literary critics, and the thing that the former is referring to does not really have a name.
^ ^ I know, I was just saying that I hesitated to use the term when speaking about an anime because of how "deconstructive" was oftentimes used as a shorthand for "undeniably awesome and intellectual and if you dont like it it's just 2deep4u"
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I wish I could tell you what Derridan Deconstruction is actually about, because then you'd know how TVT's definition is completely off the mark. But I fucking can't. It's confusing.
Basically, it is in TVT's interest to dissect and dismember a text into quantifiable parts. And in doing so it kills the text, dead. What was a thing with color and flow and elements that complemented each other became instances.
The things that they call a "deconstruction" doesn't deconstruct anything at all. It just paints the old thing in a new light, the light of modernity, of understanding, of different perspectives. Everything we think is a deconstruction is just painting from a different perspective.
The (very short) version is that Derrida would talk about a piece of philosophy, literature, etc. and discuss its outcomes and the things that run counter to it in its own systemic action. The idea wasn’t to tear down a concept or work but to show a new brand of complexity to it and expand its ideas.
TVT Deconstruction: Painting an established thing in a different perspective to show that its premise doesn't work.
Derridan Deconstruction: Considering the not-working perspective and taking it into account so you can show that yes it does work.
Basically, it is in TVT's interest to dissect and dismember a text into quantifiable parts. And in doing so it kills the text, dead. What was a thing with color and flow and elements that complemented each other became instances.
See above post. TvTropes worked fine as a catalog site: it was when people tried to use it as an easy-way-out of writing that things started getting iffy.
* The protagonist is an awful amalgamation of cliches
* it was one of the first anime series to extensively use digital animation (all of the sub fights are done digitally) and said digital animation has aged very poorly
* the dialogue often veers into genuinely laughably awful territory, especially when our protagonist is involved.
Reasons I liked it:
* The bad guy is a very interesting on the whole "mad scientist who wants to destroy mankind" stock character, and he does get some really incredible (if hammy) dialogue
* Mutio (the character I currently have as my avatar) is very wonderfully developed, especially considering the fact that she has no dialogue
* the whole conclusion is a deconstructive take on the whole "let's all be pacifists the only real way to win is not to fight guys!!!" cliche (I hesitate to use that word because TV Tropes but I really feel that it fits here)
* The laughably terrible bits are actually terrible enough to inspire genuine laughter
* that gorgeous soundtrack
Are the "laughably terrible bits" and clicheness done in ways that just indulge the viewer in the cliches/ham/etc. without trying to half-ass it?
If so, and given the soundtrack which you say is excellent, it sounds like something I might enjoy.
In other news, I just finished watching Sands of Destruction.
The issue in Multiversity that has maybe generated the most discussion is Pax Americana, so let’s talk about it. There’s a scene in there where Captain Atom is looking at his dog and trying to figure it out, and in the process of such, takes the dog apart and realizes that he’s killed him. There’s a certain reading of that which you can take to mean that deconstructing something that you like is ultimately destructive. Is that the point you’re trying to make there? Trying to dissect a comic like this too much takes away some of the enjoyment?
Yeah, but you’ll notice I did it in a comic that was deliberately designed to be dissected [laughs].
It’s very much drawing attention to that. The techniques in there are so in-your-face. It was really gratifying to see the amount of effort people put into working out stuff in Pax. I really appreciated that.
But at the same time, I attempt to do that with pretty much everything I write. I don’t telegraph it as much. The final year of Batman Incorporated was as tight, controlled and as wound around its seams as Pax, but I didn’t signal every way I was doing it. With Pax, I signaled it so I was forcing people to dissect, and then I confronted them with the dog scene.
I’m one of the people that loves to dissect stuff. I love to get into the meanings. I love breaking it down. But I’m sure you’re like me. We all know those moments when we’re sitting with friends, and we’re really enthusiastic about something we all love, and we keep wanting to talk about it. We keep wanting to get further and deeper, and there comes a moment where you go, all we’re left with is the pieces here [laughs]. It doesn’t seem very palatable anymore. I think there’s an inescapable thing when you do dissect something down, the dissection is always done from a point of enthusiasm and excitement or a need to engage with something a lot more. What you’re doing in a lot of cases is ending up with something dead in your hands.
As I said, I’m not doing this as a moralist. I’m just pointing out that this happens. I’m pointing this out in a comic where a comic critic is the main character...It’s just making a point, but not necessarily so people should stop doing this, because I can’t stop doing it. I’m sure there are people who like things — they like TV shows, they like comics, they like books — who’ll continue to do it, but there is the horrible fact that at the end, we’re usually left with something dead and stuck in a museum case and no longer giving off the same vibe of life and excitement and potential that it did when you first picked it up.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I mean, everything has to die sometime. We have to consume fiction to make it a part of us. We digest it into our minds, our subconscious, taking it apart, taking it into ourselves, so we have material to make new things.
I guess there might be a place for a literary recipes. But not a place for literal literary shit. As in, a place where we hang up the pieces that we cut up and admire it for being the pieces.
Long ago, a far off planet known as Kumaria exploded, turning into a meteor shower that fell upon earth. This lead to the bears becoming violent and attacking the humans, who created the Wall of Severance between them and the bears. Several years later, two bears, Ginko Yurishiro and Lulu Yurigasaki, disguise themselves as humans and enroll in Arashigaoka Academy, where Ginko takes interest in a human girl named Kureha Tsubaki.
I could handle Kill la Kill but what the actual fuck
i'm not familiar with Ikuhara's other work but from what i watched, Yuri Bear Storm is *heavily* metaphorical, which might be the issue here? As of the early episodes it's not going to be clear precisely what everything represents, or even in some cases what's a metaphor and what isn't.
i mean there's the obvious things, like the innuendo and the lilies, but stuff like the wall and the trials may have a meaning beyond the literal, no?
also re:that tumblr post on deconstruction, "language evolves" being used to defend the misuse of a technical term is such an annoying thing
like yeah it's not entirely untrue, and goodness knows the post-structuralists borrowed plenty of technical terms from other disciplines, but if you're going to use an established critical term in a critical context to mean something other than the meaning it's strongly associated with in the field of academic criticism, well, that's just confusing
also re:that tumblr post on deconstruction, "language evolves" being used to defend the misuse of a technical term is such an annoying thing
like yeah it's not entirely untrue, and goodness knows the post-structuralists borrowed plenty of technical terms from other disciplines, but if you're going to use an established critical term in a critical context to mean something other than the meaning it's strongly associated with in the field of academic criticism, well, that's just confusing
y'know i watch seemingly random shit but it only seems random because 1. i'm drawing from different subsets of tastes 2. i watch things rarely so data points seem isolated 3. i don't focus on recent things but instead draw from less-recent series 4. i choose series more often based on how they look at first glance or description-read than based on other people's recommendations
pretty sure i do actually have pretty coherent tastes, e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, drama, adventure (though notably NOT wacky anime comedy)
also re:that tumblr post on deconstruction, "language evolves" being used to defend the misuse of a technical term is such an annoying thing
like yeah it's not entirely untrue, and goodness knows the post-structuralists borrowed plenty of technical terms from other disciplines, but if you're going to use an established critical term in a critical context to mean something other than the meaning it's strongly associated with in the field of academic criticism, well, that's just confusing
Eh, it still gets its point across.
Only if the intended audience is familiar with the TVT use of the term.
But in any case, it's just pretentious and kind of dumb. There's no reason to use 'deconstruction' to mean that a show is dark and bad stuff happens, or that it subverts audience expectations by injecting realism into familiar conventions of the genre. That's got nothing whatsoever to do with 'deconstructing'. You might as well call it, i dunno, 'psychoanalysing' or 'close reading', it would make about as much sense.
y'know i watch seemingly random shit but it only seems random because 1. i'm drawing from different subsets of tastes 2. i watch things rarely so data points seem isolated 3. i don't focus on recent things but instead draw from less-recent series 4. i choose series more often based on how they look at first glance or description-read than based on other people's recommendations
pretty sure i do actually have pretty coherent tastes, e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, drama, adventure (though notably NOT wacky anime comedy)
i tend to watch things that i hear about, and the more people recommend stuff to me or talk about it around me, the more likely i am to watch it. Sometimes something just catches my interest, but that's rarer, and tends not to happen with anime because the only way i ever hear about anime is from other people talking about it; i seldom see it advertised or anything like that, and i don't specifically read anime fansites or anything of the kind.
In practice i think i also appear to be watching 'random shit'... i'm not sure i could define my tastes in terms of genre or anything like that, i think my viewing habits are just all over the place.
"Wacky anime comedy" can imply a lot of different things... i've noticed lately i'm more able to enjoy OTT anime reactions to silly occurrences, which i used to absolutely despise. i find it really hard to pinpoint what it is i find funny/not funny, though. Some things amuse me, some things just don't.
I am with Tachyon about the misuse of deconstruction, although TVT is not the point of origin for this specific misnomer—that would be comic book fans misinterpreting the use of the word in reference to Watchmen back in the '80s. Which really illustrates my thoughts on the matter: Some works are intrinsically deconstructive, but that is not the same thing as a subversion through realism.
I think at this point I usually just watch slice of life shows that seem interesting enough while they are airing and older series that are recommended to me or otherwise seem worth checking out. The SoL shows have been a mixed bag, I guess, but there have been enough hits for me that I have not really felt much of an urge to change my viewing habits up too much.
While it might be better to watch other types of new shows more often, I think I almost prefer being able to watch more plot heavy shows in chunks rather than on an episode-a-week basis, possibly because it makes it easier for me to put things together. I am not really sure. I suppose I have never been one to watch much super deep stuff anyway.
On a pretty unrelated note, I tend to rightly or wrongly associate the word "deconstruction" with talk about Madoka on TVT. That sort of talk kept me away from the show for a while, which might have been a good thing because I ended up disliking a lot of it when I finally sat down and watched the show recently. Of course, that is just my personal preference, your mileage may vary.
I also watched Princess Tutu lately, which if I remember right is another series that was often hyped on TVT, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I honestly think it has one of the most interesting stories of any anime I have seen so far.
Comments
Also, started watching The Woman called Fujiko MIne. It's definitely a darker take on the Lupin III universe, being a sort of Alternate Universe version of how the Lupin III gang met and evntually became the team we know and love. Overall, the tone is more hard boiled and Film Noir-ish, but it still has a good bit of the goofy charm that endeared me to Lupin. I'm 6 episodes in so far and it's pretty good so far, though I have a few complaints. My biggest complaint is how Zenigata is handled in the series. In the past Zenigata is the goofy somewhat incompetent (well, relative to Lupin and the gang. When he's not being compared to Lupin, he's actually somewhat decent) cop chasing after Lupin. Traditionally, he's portrayed as the good cop eternally chasing after Lupin and trying to bring him to justice through honest means. In this series he's much closer to a dirty cop, trading Fujiko's freedom in one episode for sexual favors and trying to shoot Lupin in the back, as well as being kind of misogynistic at points. While it's not out of place for the story this show is trying to tell, it does feel really weird to see Zenigata acting like this. Even worse than Zenigata on the misogyny front is Oscar, a character created for the TV show as Zenigata's lieutenant. He commonly refers to Fujiko as "Spittoon" for her sexual escapades. Honestly Oscar is the worst part of the show. I've been watching the english dub and I'm really enjoying it. With the exception of Michelle Ruff as Fujiko, none of the original voices from the English dub play their characters, but that's to be expected, since it's Funimation doing the dubbing instead of Geneon. Sonny Strait does an excellent job with his interpretation of Lupin, even if Tony Oliver is the definitive Lupin voice in my mind.
I loved it dearly, but I would hesitate to recommend it to most
I would not, however, hesitate to recommend the soundtrack
Definitely some of the best soundtrack work I've heard in any anime period, and it holds up on its own beautifully
* The protagonist is an awful amalgamation of cliches
* it was one of the first anime series to extensively use digital animation (all of the sub fights are done digitally) and said digital animation has aged very poorly
* the dialogue often veers into genuinely laughably awful territory, especially when our protagonist is involved.
Reasons I liked it:
* The bad guy is a very interesting on the whole "mad scientist who wants to destroy mankind" stock character, and he does get some really incredible (if hammy) dialogue
* Mutio (the character I currently have as my avatar) is very wonderfully developed, especially considering the fact that she has no dialogue
* the whole conclusion is a deconstructive take on the whole "let's all be pacifists the only real way to win is not to fight guys!!!" cliche (I hesitate to use that word because TV Tropes but I really feel that it fits here)
* The laughably terrible bits are actually terrible enough to inspire genuine laughter
* that gorgeous soundtrack
If so, and given the soundtrack which you say is excellent, it sounds like something I might enjoy.
In other news, I just finished watching Sands of Destruction.
The Judgebears sequence was the most utterly baffling thing
tho that's just me and i have weird opinions on things
actually makes things sound significantly more straightforward than they actually are
i'm not familiar with Ikuhara's other work but from what i watched, Yuri Bear Storm is *heavily* metaphorical, which might be the issue here? As of the early episodes it's not going to be clear precisely what everything represents, or even in some cases what's a metaphor and what isn't.
i mean there's the obvious things, like the innuendo and the lilies, but stuff like the wall and the trials may have a meaning beyond the literal, no?
like yeah it's not entirely untrue, and goodness knows the post-structuralists borrowed plenty of technical terms from other disciplines, but if you're going to use an established critical term in a critical context to mean something other than the meaning it's strongly associated with in the field of academic criticism, well, that's just confusing
still though
1. i'm drawing from different subsets of tastes
2. i watch things rarely so data points seem isolated
3. i don't focus on recent things but instead draw from less-recent series
4. i choose series more often based on how they look at first glance or description-read than based on other people's recommendations
pretty sure i do actually have pretty coherent tastes, e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, drama, adventure (though notably NOT wacky anime comedy)
But in any case, it's just pretentious and kind of dumb. There's no reason to use 'deconstruction' to mean that a show is dark and bad stuff happens, or that it subverts audience expectations by injecting realism into familiar conventions of the genre. That's got nothing whatsoever to do with 'deconstructing'. You might as well call it, i dunno, 'psychoanalysing' or 'close reading', it would make about as much sense.
i tend to watch things that i hear about, and the more people recommend stuff to me or talk about it around me, the more likely i am to watch it. Sometimes something just catches my interest, but that's rarer, and tends not to happen with anime because the only way i ever hear about anime is from other people talking about it; i seldom see it advertised or anything like that, and i don't specifically read anime fansites or anything of the kind.
In practice i think i also appear to be watching 'random shit'... i'm not sure i could define my tastes in terms of genre or anything like that, i think my viewing habits are just all over the place.
"Wacky anime comedy" can imply a lot of different things... i've noticed lately i'm more able to enjoy OTT anime reactions to silly occurrences, which i used to absolutely despise. i find it really hard to pinpoint what it is i find funny/not funny, though. Some things amuse me, some things just don't.
While it might be better to watch other types of new shows more often, I think I almost prefer being able to watch more plot heavy shows in chunks rather than on an episode-a-week basis, possibly because it makes it easier for me to put things together. I am not really sure. I suppose I have never been one to watch much super deep stuff anyway.
On a pretty unrelated note, I tend to rightly or wrongly associate the word "deconstruction" with talk about Madoka on TVT. That sort of talk kept me away from the show for a while, which might have been a good thing because I ended up disliking a lot of it when I finally sat down and watched the show recently. Of course, that is just my personal preference, your mileage may vary.
I also watched Princess Tutu lately, which if I remember right is another series that was often hyped on TVT, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I honestly think it has one of the most interesting stories of any anime I have seen so far.