I was apparently so caught in gaming and other distraction that I have forgotten this blog.
Well, to be honest, there is also the fandumb on the part of both anime veterans and new guys to the hobby. This is the kind of discussion that makes me sick.
As a veteran (remember I started watching them when I was 4 or 6 years old) I am of the opinion that we are way too harsh to the “new” anime. A lot are pointing fingers to moé as the single cause of the decline that seems to be ongoing. How is it different from the situation of the 1970s where Super Robot reigned supreme, or the 1980s where it was mostly sport anime? I mean, I can get tired of the always angry, always impatient and ALWAYS SHOUTING mecha pilot or the sport prodigy archetypes, they did annoy me at one point of my life as anime fan. I was always more fond of the monolithic badass of few words (like Kenshiro, Guts or The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s movies).
When I think about, I can think of two reasons, even tho they are not the sole reasons. Until over 10 years ago, we relied on our local importers and localizers for our anime fix. They chose for the local market and demand of the local public. I insist on the local part because every countries are fortunately not the same. As a result, USA anime fandom is not the same as those from Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore and Philipine, to name a few countries. So, while the importers gave us a choice, it was a limited choice that catered to the taste of the fandom of the moment. If sport anime is in, like because of a world cup or the olympics, one could expect more sport anime, otherwise it is the action shounen and the romcom shoujo.
It was more rare to see an anime catering to another kind of audience. Onii-sama e created a lot of shock among the french parents associations because of its homosexual tone, let’s not get started on Hokuto no Ken. So our choice was limited by what taste our education gave us and what the moral guardians allowed. In this time of broadband internet, the importers and the moral guardians hardly matters anymore, you have now the choice to watch ultraviolent anime (Elfen Lied) and what people calls girly moeshit (Aria) and anything in between.A single click and at the cost of HD space and free time, here you have the lastest episode of… Bleach, yeah an example. Yes guys, this anime the importers took so long to license, you have already seen it months or years before every “casuals”. Here, you can chuckle when your friends are telling you that Death Note is the shit, “Yeah, right, Slowpoke.” Now think about it, you now have the CHOICE. And you can see ALL the bad, with the mediocre, average, the good and the potential classic that people may talk about for the years to come. But you are seeing the bad, really and think to yourself, “What the fuck is this shit?”. You need to remember what I said about the importers. Yes, they filtered out the bad shit for thirty years, and sometimes some of the bad shit of the 1970-1990s does get through. Those are the series that are lying somewhere in a closet, shamefully hidden by the guys who licensed it and collecting dust, those are the anime that gets a few episodes aired before being pulled out of air because of poor reception. Like, “what was that anime about a new sport mixing baseball with football (what USA calls soccer)?” And you have forgotten the title, and it may be better that way because it was that bad. This is one of those anime that makes you feel lucky if you have never wasted your time with.
Now the second reason, the anime netsphere, be it forums, image boards or blogs. Before them, you relied on anime magazines. They told you what is bad and what is awesome, but not anymore. Why? Well, you can look at blogs or forums to have a hot reaction over the lastest episode of Bleach. It’s easier now to voice your opinion, and easier to be listened. The thing is that, one complains, followed by another one and another one. See where I am going? One can go to youtube and read the comments about music or movies. “Music/movies used to be better in the 1960s-1980s”. How can 1990s be bad when music give us The Cranberries, Radiohead and more, and when we got Pulp Fiction, The Crow and Se7en? How could 2000s be worse than 1980s and 1990s when you got Muse, Masterplan for music, and Shaun of the Dead, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Hot Fuzz for movies?
Now extend this to anime and can you see how the whole “Things used to be better in the *insert decade here*” have become laughable and disgusting to me?
I do have hope in the creative and entertainment industry of nowaday, and I want to. I am not just going to sit on my ass and cry over how more anime should be like *insertgreatclassic* here. I do want to be surprised, nicely, by the likes of Gungrave, Durararara and Bakemonogatari. And if it meant to have to roll my eyes over yet another harem anime/mecha anime/Generic Light Novel, fine. That would not stop me from trying to search for the diamond, I mean, afte all, you DO have to dig through dirt and shit to find some, right?
But the current problem I meet is when I tell that modern anime is not as bad as veterans makes it out to be, and name the series I mentioned, I get the “Yes, but…” answer. What I am supposed to answer? What those modern anime have to do or have to hope to live up the classics? I have yet to hear a compelling answer regarding why those classics are untouchable standards that everyone should bow to and never criticize. But until, all those reasons belongs to the subjective realm and are therefore not acceptable for me.
I may see myself as a veteran, but I think that veterans are just way too severe to modern anime. Especially when they forget that their classics were aired among rubbish too.
I have taken a little break from blogging to think things over. I could have come back earlier but appendicitis was on the way.
Also, I see a large and long anime backlog; now to pick the good apart from the trash…
So yeah.
Protips. The decade end the December 31st 2010, NOT 2009.
I’ll not talk a lot about anime. Other than the fact that KyoAni finally fucked up, it had to happen anyways. Firstly with Munto, then with Endless Eight. K-on! was good but not great, not to the point to get a DVD purchase from me.
Finally 2009 confirmed that we can get someone good off Type-Moon’s material with the new Kara no Kyoukai movies. However, I am worried about the Unlimited Blade Works movie.
Leaving anime aside, 2009 was a terrible year, for a lot of people in my circle of friends and what’s not. The crisis indeed reminded us that nothing can’t be taken for granted. France, in the social and economic side, have taken a downhill ride. Copenhagen was a fiasco and Michael Jackson died.
I am fairly certain that it also gave us some good, but seeing Twilight reigning in the box office, I am really worried.
Happy New Years everyone, let’s hope for a brighter future. (and perhaps I’ll be more active than I was this year)
Just very unmotivated to talk about anime. Maybe the offer of the winter will motivate me. Moreover, my time was burnt playing EVE Online, trying to beat Touhou UFO and reading Dungeons & Dragons 4.
More than TVTropes, Badass of the Week is my favorite time sinker when it comes to… waste my time reading.
Just to make sure you are not mistaken. The fictional badasses featured in this site are few and very deeply rooted in pop culture (Godzilla, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader Kefka…), and none of them are from anime. I’d like to think that Ben would hate it if the entirety of /a/ and /m/ email him about Sasuke or Kamina being end-all be-all parangons of badassitude. Myself, I’d be very annoyed if that happened. SaiGAR was ugly enough, BoTW need not to be spoiled with that.
What make Badass of the Week a badass read are the hilarious descriptions of the featured weekly badass.
Here a few samples
On the Viking of Stanford Bridge
:
Standing astride the bridge was one man. A giant Norse berserker silently surveyed the Saxon army, firmly clutching a massive double-bladed Greataxe in his weathered, calloused hands. A lone Viking hero granted permission by his King to die honorably in combat, tasked with defending the narrow bridge and buying time for his brethren to reorganize. His face was concealed by an imposing horned helm – metal plates reinforcing a mask constructed from the bleached bone remains of a fearsome animal skull, his wild eyes peering through the darkness like searing orbs of white-hot flame. A living demon, sent forth from the darkest recesses of Hell itself to exact brutal vengeance on any mortal brave or foolish enough to cross him, defying anyone with more balls than sense to test his wrath.
The full might of the Anglo-Saxon army charged the bridge, determined to extricate this colossal beast from his post through the sheer weight of their numbers, but the narrow walkway above the raging waters of the River Derwent was only wide enough for four men to stand abreast, and its guardian was unwavering in his resolve. The first rank of fighting men crashed full-speed into the Norseman like a school bus full of insolent teenagers being hurled face-first into a wall of unflinching spikes.
About Simo Häyhä
In the winter of 1939, the Soviet Union was dicks. Russian Premier Josef Stalin thought it would be really fucking hilarious if he all of a sudden sent like two million of his dudes over to nearby Finland to start kicking everyone’s asses and seizing whatever land he could get his borsch-covered hands on, while simultaneously kicking puppies and shouting profanities at inanimate objects in a vodka-and-caviar induced roid rage. While this may have been a laugh riot for Stalin and his numbnuts cronies, the Finnish people obviously were a little unhappy with the prospect of having all their cross-country skis, Winter Olympics gold medals and salmon fishing boats captured by a rampaging horde of godless commie bastards, so they decided to open an extra-large can of whoop-ass and give the Russkies the ballsack kicking they were apparently looking for.
Now when you think of Finland, the phrase “military powerhouse” isn’t exactly the first thing that pops into your head. Likewise, when you looked at Simo Häyhä, a slight-framed Finnish farmer who didn’t stand an inch over five feet tall, you also probably didn’t think “total fucking unstoppable badass”.
Let’s just say, you have over five years of weekly articles, enough to sink your time if you just caught the wagon. And it is well worth it.
Why do I write about it?
Well, the webmaster just released a book. I am considering whether I should buy it. Perhaps as a christmas gift? ;3
I must say that it is a horrible decade for the children of the 1970s-1980s.
The early portion of the 2000s decade saw Charles Bronson and Barry White leaving us. The later one had the Pope John Paul II, Arafat, Gary Gygax, Luciano Pavarotti (guys like me remember his contribution to Bono’s “Miss Sarajevo“, personally my favorite song of the 1990s), Michael Jackson and some more I forgot but all of them left their marks, small or big, in the pop culture of the two mentioned 20th century decades.
Now, it is the turn of Patrick Swayze who left us after a long battle against cancer at age 57. He is most famous for his roles in Ghost and Dirty Dancing. Nerds and B-movies fans will also remember one of his earlier role in Red Dawn. Tearjerking movie fans will also remember City of Joy. This is enough for me to state that he was one of the icons of the 1980s. Now he is gone, watching Ghost will not bear the same feelings anymore.
Before 9/11/2001, I was hoping for something to happen on the 12/31/1999, something interesting. Of course, nothing happened.
Forward to 9/11/2001. I went through two months of night shift work in the security, something like 15 hours a day for five days by night. It was very difficult and it messed up my sleep schedule for the years to come. Four days earlier, my boss told me that I had to grab my paycheck from his office, in a lost city in the north of Paris, something like Saint-Leu La Foret.
This day, I left my home to run to the train station at 1:00PM. Then I found that it was indeed in the middle of NOWHERE! Saint-Leu La Foret was a craphole lost somewhere in the nostril of France, my boss’ desk was very far, somewhere in the industrial distrinct of Saint-Leu, where there was no freaking bus. Cue a long walk of two hours to reach the office, knowing that I had left my home two hours ago. Then I reached the desk and nobody was here. I called my boss on his mobile phone from a phone booth that was stuck in the middle of that industrial district for whatever reason. I had to wait one more hour before he came back to his office.
Finally, he was here and gave me my pay. It was not a check, instead it was 7000 francs, in money paper. Something I should better hide quick in my bag.
Cue another TWO HOURS walk back to the train station, THIRTY MINUTES waiting for the train to come. Then I decided to turn on my walkman, the old school one with tape and radio tuner. I tuned to my favorite station to enjoy some good old rock music. Then I heard the journalist talking about something about NYC. I did think it was some kind of prank, something they usually do.
The train came and on my way back to Paris, I gazed over the french landscape from the window of the train, while listening a tape where I recorded some X Japan. Back in the station that would bring me back home, I listened the radio again, there was still some of these rather worrying news. To myself, I thought, “It must be something really serious.”, the quality of reception of the radio was crappy, so it was kinda jammed.
Back in my hometown, I walked, having run after the bus way too late. Then I finally reached my home, my youngest brother and youngest sister rushed up to me and told me, “Brother! Brother! There were two planes that crashed over NYC!”
Then I stared at the black & white old computer monitor that served us as TV after our old TV died on us one year earlier.
This was how serious the events reported by my radio were.
A lot of people from 9 to 70+ (on 2001) remembers what they did on the 9/11/2001.
I am not dead. I was just away, taking a little break from anime watching and blogging because the bile of these last months and weeks (especially regarding a series without pretention classified as the antechrist and the herald of cynicism) have become unbearable, unbreathable and unreadable.
That aside, I was dog sitting, if we call this baby sitting for dogs. It was chilling, almost Kitanoesque. It was two great weeks on my own where I did some interesting discoveries, like this spanish black comedy called “El Crimen Ferpecto”, found an addiction in Gordon Ramsay’s shows and decided to go ahead and start purchasing Dungeons & Dragons 4 books, about time.
I have the first and second Players Handbook, and the first Monster Manual. All I lack now is the Dungeon Master Guide, I have ordered it online two days ago, I hope the french postal service don’t fail me.
I had lots of fun with Touhou 12.3 and Touhou 12, where I found my favorite stage 6 boss: Byakuren <3
While the characters from touhou games episodes 8 to 11 had to slowly grow on me, my liking for Byakuren was immediate. Gothic lolita, long hair, “onee-san” aura and some Yuria + Jesus vibes were enough to hit me. Nue is a close second because of her zettai ryouiki. Touhou 12 itself was a harder game than I expected from the demo.
Perhaps this period away will set my enthusiasm for the hobby ablaze again, I hope so.
PS: I added a new blog on my Nerd’s Corners, one dedicated to BAD movies, you should check this out.
PPS:
Things that happened the 09/09:
09 AD: Arminius led an aliiance of Germanic tribes that annhiliate three Roman legions in the forest of Teutoburg.
1999 AD: Sega Dreamcast is released in North America.
Space: Above and Beyond, Jericho, Journeyman and now Sarah Connor Chronicles (‘Rome’ was originally meant to last five seasons and cover the rise of the Christ, guess what happened). American writers had shown an ability to write compelling stories, settings and characters. However, executives are idiots, favoring immediate audience over leaving a show a chance to find its audience leading to its cancellation. It makes me wonder if the market should not change its model and leave writers and directors to do their things as they envisioned it. I guess it will never happen unless something as big as a major crisis force them to change.
Freedom on french internet is NOT dead yet.
In an unexpected turn of fortune, the law had been censored after the Constitutional Council judged that the punishment part of the HADOPI law was against the constitution.
French web users are waiting for Albanel to resign as she had promised. After all, a secretary of Culture who said that Open Office have a firewall have NO place in the governement and clearly is not competent to write laws about internet.
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