• As might be gathered from the choice of screenshot, the character of Paife – who originally I found a fairly annoying addition to the cast and will henceforth be referred to as Lesbiana Jones – has begun to grow on me. She’s still something of a cipher and a stereotype, but she gets fun lines.
• If it weren’t for the presence of Space Jesus… err… Iks, I could totally see a Crest of the Stars/The Third crossover working really easily. The Third are clearly a bizarre offshoot of the Abh…
• Even with Space Jesus, a skilled writer could probably make one work.
• I’m actually kind of surprised at the increase in the presence of “supernatural” abilities beyond the vaguely defined powers of The Third. Then again, maybe Japan is just so used to the idea of “chi attacks” that it doesn’t register as supernatural to them anymore. Or maybe if I went back and rewatched the first two discs I’d see that sort of thing was always there.
• I love, love, love scenes with evil doppelgangers in anime, because it’s fun to hear the voice actors and actresses do a different take on their characters’ voices. (A similar scene was enough to turn an otherwise lamentable episode into one of the highlights of the Naruto filler arcs… though that’s still damning with faint praise.)
• Related, I was relatively pleased with the resolution of the “Honoka reacts to killing a man” subplot, as it admirably didn’t go for the easy “Killing is always wrong!” resolution.
• Remind me to do a post someday about killing, DC and Marvel comics, anti-heroes, and why I really like the character of the current Batgirl. It will only be the ten thousandth time someone has expressed similar ideas on the Internet, making it fit right in on this blog.
• Back to The Third, with this Gravestone plot resolved, I’m rather curious as to where the rest of the series is going, as we’re only about halfway through.
• Also, is there any free solution for playback and screencapping – including the subtitles – of DVDs under Windows that doesn’t suck horribly?

There, wasn’t that fascinating?

Taking advantage of Random Curiosity’s Spring 2008 preview, which provides screenshots and summaries and other things I’m much too lazy to do myself, let’s see whether there’s anything coming out that I’m interested in.

Allison & Lillia – By the Kino’s Journey guy? Sold. Doesn’t sound like a bad concept either, so double sold.

Macross Frontier – Eh, probably not. Might be good, but I’ve never really gotten into the Macross franchise beyond Robotech.

kure-nai – Hmm. I’ll wait and see what sort of buzz this one gets. I liked what I saw of Red Garden, though, so I’ll keep an eye on this even though the premise is less interesting.

The Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~ – Based on an obscure dungeoncrawling game? Pass. Although since it’s being streamed legally, I might check it out just because of that.

Amatsuki – Hmm. On the fence here.

Kamen no Maid Guy – …might try this one on the strength of the bizarre premise.

Blassreiter – Doesn’t sound to interesting, but again legal free streaming might make me give it a shot.

Wagaya no Oinarisama – Might give this one a shot, although I’m not optimistic for its chances of holding my interest.

Nabari no Ou – I like ninjas. Another on the “try, but not optimistic” list.

SOUL EATER – Hmm. If this gets good buz, I might check it out.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – Huh. Could be very interesting, or confusing crud.

Himitsu (Top Secret) ~The Revelation – That’s a nice premise; I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Toshokan Sensou – Another “if it gets good buz and I’m bored” series. The premise isn’t bad, but I’m worried it’ll lead to something overly preachy. (Yes, yes, censorship is bad. We know.)

Golgo 13 – Ooh. This could be really, really cool. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read of the manga.

And that’s about everything that interests me. Post done.

The girl in white on the left, of course, is Jesus.

After coining the term “harem horde” to describe this type of show, Steven Den Beste observes:

[T]his is possibly the best explaination I’ve heard for a series setup to explain just why it is that you’ve got a place where there are a thousand bodacious babes and only one guy who doesn’t want any of them. The nations of the world would have picked the most beautiful girls they had to offer as sacrifices.

But it’s still a stupid idea.

Which I more or less agree with. But I’m kind of sad that this core concept is being “wasted” on a harem horde show, because – freed from the constraints and purposes of that genre – I think this “stupid idea” can become a rather good one.

Step One: Exoda, instead of – so far as I can gather from the frame grabs – being essentially a human male serving as male lead for the harem, becomes a truly non-human entity. Even if he occasionally takes human form, he isn’t one, and he isn’t interested in romance with the women any more than he was in sating his non-existent vile lusts on them in the first place. He becomes a disinterested, if vaguely benevolent, landlord.

So, what is our show about, then? The women establishing their new nation and society. There’s some obvious challenges there: each of these women is originally from a different country and culture, probably with some language barriers. Practical skills for settling and uninhabited island are likely to be thin on the ground.

And then we get the internal conflict. Beyond the siple of question of who’s in charge, I can see a lot of distinct factions arising. Some might worship Exoda, others might hate him and even want to kill him. Some might be better off on the island and others might struggle to find a way to return to their old lives. Some might hate the outside world for abandoning them and try pirate raids to get much-needed supplies.

External conflict would come in later in the series, as the nations of the world react to Shina Dark’s rise. Do world powers feel threatened? A world that sends 1000 women to appease a demon is probably not terribly feminist, so that angle can get played too. I imagine a climax with a multi-national fleet sent to destroy Shina Dark and kill or reclaim the women, as all the internal conflicts come to a head…

Hmm. Now I’ve spent much too long and too many words thinking about this. I might need to check out this series when it comes out and see whether it does anything like this with the concept, or whether it just plays out a mostly generic “harem horde’ story.

Sadly, I imagine the latter is much more likely.

Over at his new blog, he introduces me to the existence of a fairly significant project to rewrite the Haruhi novels/anime with the genders of all the characters reversed. (Via a link to post on “Moe Check!” ). Pete writes:

I am not amused by the sex swap per se, primarily because I think Ranma squeezed that particular lemon dry back in the 80s…P.S. Truth to be told, Kyonko does play some angles on the swap which Ranma didn’t. Specifically, the favourite joke of Kyonko is how all the relationships and actions become ridiculous after the swap, e.g. Mr. Yuki Nagato inviting Kyonko to his room late in the evening. It’s the schtick advocates of colorblind society enjoy a lot, and it never gets old.

Genderbending fanfic of various sorts is actually one of the more interesting genres to me, and this post made me think about why, which lead into some various thoughts on the different sub-genres of it, which lead to some various thoughts on how I would do it to the Naruto cast (if I wasn’t dreadfully late on finishing the fanfics I’ve actually started). If any readers actually (a) exist, and (b) aren’t completely disturbed by this topic of conversation, then click on the more link for these thoughts. (Minor spoilers for Naruto involved.)

I once read… somewhere I forget… a non-fan of the genre describe genderbending fanfic as an author who wanted to pair up two characters of the same sex, but was too cowardly to actually write a homosexual relationship. While such fanfics do exist, I think there’s substantially more potential to the genre, even if many fics only reach a fraction of that potential.

The simplest type is to take a character of characters and have a plot device change their gender, and this is probably the most common. It can be played for laughs, of course, or – indeed – used to trigger a romance. (Although, this often involves the genderbent character changing his/her sexual preference, which is an exceedingly thorny concept.) It can also be used as a way to give that character a different perspective on life and the other characters – particularly if other characters are unaware of the swap. (Imagine Ranma 1/2 if more of the characters – in particular, say, Akane – didn’t know that “Ranko” was actually Ranma.)

A much more interesting type – to me at least – is to take a character or characters and ask “What if this character was the opposite gender, and always had been?” I love fanfic that posits a single change to canon and explores the consequences, and it’s hard to conceive of a single change of comparable simplicity and universality that has such a wide variety of potential effects. This, apparently, is the nature of the Haruhi fan project that prompted the posts that prompted this post.

Take a case where just one character is genderbent. Suddenly, that character’s relation to every other character is substantially altered. Previous romantic interests are now potential romantic rivals – and vice versa. As much as we might wish otherwise, society is not gender-blind; people are going to expect different things of the character.

Take Naruto, for example.

Switch Naruto’s gender, but don’t change anything else. What changes as a result? Perhaps a young girl is more sympathetic to the people of the Leaf Village than a young boy? Maybe; maybe not. But she might be a bit more subdued than male Naruto is, less likely to engage in elaborate pranks like he does in the first episodes. Most fanfic of this sort I’ve read makes “Naruko” the lone girl uninterested in Sasuke, but what if she weren’t? Suddenly, everything changes. Sakura becomes her main rival; Sasuke her ambition. (Does the Sakura/Ino feud become a three-way brawl?) Imagine the difference in connotation when Sasuke abandons the village, and Sakura tearfully admits that only Naruto has a chance to bring him back! And what of Hinata? Wouldn’t a female Naruto have seemed more approachable to her, perhaps starting a friendship prior to the beginning of the series? How would the female Naruto react to Jiraiya? All in all, it’s a fascinating scenario.

Do the same to Sasuke. Suddenly, Sakura and Ino are probably still friends. Is Naruto likely to be interested in female Sasuke, displacing Sakura? Who else might be? Does Sasuke face pressure to marry into another clan (the Hyuuga perhaps?), ending the Uchiha Clan forever? And so on.

Swapping Sakura alone is less interesting, as without further swaps it removes the romance angle from the triad of main characters entirely. I suppose something could be done on a Sakura/Ino-focused story, but it’s unlikely that Ino and male Sakura would have become friends in the first place. Perhaps “he” might latch onto Naruto instead?

As for swapping all three, or the whole cast (as the Haruhi project does)… well, I’ve toyed with the prior idea in fanfic before, but only humorously. It’s interesting to consider whether the “female Sasuke and fanboys” dynamic would differ dramatically from the “male Sasuke and fangirls dynamic.” Some of the same issues mentioned above would still be around. If you swap everyone – and therefore ninja villages are female-dominated – would that change how ninja are perceived by the greater world?

This would be where my conclusion went, if this post really had much of a point. But then, that “pointless” there in the tagline of the blog isn’t for nothing!

• What’s the difference between the first chapter of a fanfiction I’m not going to read more of and the latest story-arc in Naruto? One swiftly and clumsily eliminates old characters, introduces a host of new characters including a new love interest for a pre-existing character, in a burst of enthusiasm boosts said pre-existing character to new, unrivaled heights of power with little regard to explanation or logic, and generally fails to generate any interest in where the story is going. The other I frequently encounter on Fanfiction.Net.

Record of Lodoss War

• This anime is way, way more boring than I remember it being. I never got around to watching the second half.
• The only amusing bit is noting just how obvious it is that this is based on someone’s D&D campaign.
• Okay, and marveling at how it starts in media res, then promptly goes back in time and tells the long, boring beginning in full detail. Then, when it reaches the point where the mission the characters were on (but did not complete) in the first episode begins, it jumps forward to after that mission, leaving the various very important events and revelations to be slowly revealed in flashback.
• The first time I watched the show, I spent almost ten minutes trying to find the episode I’d accidentally skipped.
• The art is occasionally very pretty, though.

American Comics (About Which No One Reading This Really Cares)

• I’ve been on something of a comics… um… acquiring binge, lately. Exploring DC seriously for the first time, really. Lots of good stuff there, though plagued with many of the same sort of stupid editorial decisions, “big crossover event”-driven plotting, and occasionally just plain bad writing as Marvel.
• Speaking of Marvel, at least the books spinning out of Civil War have been fairly well-done and interesting, even if that event was… not. The pro-registration side is still direly in need of a more favorable portrayal, though, even in their own books.

Claymore Anime

• The first episode has aired. Like the manga, it starts off a little weak, but it was well-done. I’m looking forward to the rest.

This Post…

• …has a lot of categories.

Aaron Nowack…

• …is lazy, and hasn’t posted to this blog or worked seriously on his fanfiction in too long.

• Quoth my friend, prior to starting the DVD: “No way they can wrap this up satisfactorily in three more episodes, particularly when they spent the last DVD dicking around with comic relief.”
• Wow, the music choices for the beginning here, where they’re recapping Karin collapsing are kind of… odd.
• Star Seed, huh? Clearly the main villain is Sailor Galaxia! Or something.
• …so during the bit where Shizuha and Mikaze are sneaking into the evil conspiracy lab to rescue Karin, Shizuha flashes a little gold button at the guard, who is shocked and lets them past despite his suspicions. Did my friend and I miss something, or is this completely unexplained?
• My friend reminds me that the stuff about Shizuha and licenses didn’t come out of nowhere, but was mentioned way back on the first DVD. I completely forgot about it, probably because it doesn’t get even a mention on DVDs 2 and 3.
• Quoth my friend again: “I think we’re thinking harder about this show than the creators did.”
• So… what was the deal with the evil conspiracy anyway? They show too much emotion to be infected, I think, but their motivation for apparently wanting the alien’s vaguely defined plot to succeed is never really explained. (They go to the point of trying to stop the Meteor Sweepers from intercepting a fragment that would hit central Japan so it’s hard to see them as anything other than willing collaborators.)
• Incidentally, we finally see a male on the orbital station! Huzzah!
• The attempts to call back our main characters when the comet changes course seem kind of silly. It’s established that if the comet hits it’s the end of human life. Anything is a better idea than just letting it past.
• Quoth Mikaze (paraphrased): “I can’t die here; I’ve got too much left to do!” Quoth me: “Unfortunately, physics does not care.”
• Okay, so I’ve still got a bunch of questions about Karin, namely: Accepting the idea of preserving the one apparently non-taken over infected person for study, and even letting her loose for a better experiment toward coexistence… why in the world would you put her or let her get into a position where she’s given countless opportunities to reveal that she’s a sleeper agent and infect Earth’s defenders and a position where she’s likely to be re-exposed? What triggers the infection flaring up again? How much of her pre-infection persona survives, or are we dealing with an alien that happens to think she’s Karin? Just why do the other infected care so much about recovering her?
• For that matter, how was Miharu infected, and how did she avoid detection for so long? There might be no way to detect infection, but surely the sudden, drastic change in personality would set off a warning flag that would prevent her from becoming commander of an orbital station?
• Unless CEMA is completely under the control of the collaborators, of course, but then they could have been much more effective in general. All the orbital staff could have been infected easily, for one.
• Shouldn’t CEMA – assuming non-complete domination by infected people – have had some sort of contingency plan for the orbital stations getting infected? Even if the non-collaborators had no idea about infection, surely there would have been some sort of mission sent up to investigate the stations.
• My friend mentions that the series was too short for the story they were trying to tell. I think it could have been done in thirteen episodes if they’d been more focused and not packed the entire actual plot into three to five of them.
• It would be really interesting to see a fanfic that told the whole story from the perspective of the orbital station and the Comet Blasters. Lots of nice potential for creepiness as the crew gets infected one-by-one…
• I guess I can kind of see why Steven Den Beste calls this a sports anime, but I’m not sure I agree. Closest to watching sports anime I’ve gotten is watching Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go over my sister’s shoulder, but it seems to me that there’s an element of… competition, I guess, that Stratos 4 is lacking. There’s bits and pieces of it, with the girls’ minor rivalry with boys at the beginning and the Meteor Sweepers vs. Comet Blasters thing, but that’s never really the focus.
• Speaking of Steven, a while back I recall he mentioned that one of the most often and annoying “I know you’ve said you’ve considered and rejected, but I think you should try this anime anyway” e-mail types he got was people trying to get him to watch Stellvia. I thought this was kind of odd, since while I knew Stellvia was well-received I didn’t think it really had that much of a vocal fanbase. Having seen Stratos 4, I think one reason for this oddity is that the two are really very similar shows. (Though for at least one stretch, Stellvia is actually way more of a sports anime than Stratos 4 is.) Which isn’t to say Steven would like it, of course – I seem to recall fairly heavy doses of high-school-type angst in the middle of the show, which he’s expressed an aversion to.
• I, on the other hand, remember very much liking what I saw of Stellvia in fansub, and watching Stratos 4 has left me with a strong desire to get the rest of the Stellvia DVDs and finally see the ending to it.
• I was very, very surprised that the ending didn’t involve the girls using the prototype aircraft they’d been rebuilding to take out a comet without Comet Blaster support.
• My final rating on Stratos 4: B- or C+, depending on how charitable I’m feeling. Entertaining, but the general looseness of the plot (in particular the inadequately explained antagonists) keep it from reaching its potential.

And that’s more than enough of that, I think.

• The extra after the first episode on DVD 2 is absolutely horrid. Even for a series as lowbrow as My-HIME, it stands out as a fairly disgusting display. It left me embarrassed not only to be watching the show, not only to be an anime fan, but to be a member of the same species as the people who made it. Worst. Fanservice. Ever.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Only to go to AnimeOnDVD, note the sight redesign, and find the link to the page announcing its licensing and not much else, not even the identity of the licensor. (Which seems to be a trend and is a little annoying.)

Just an odd little coincidence presented for your amusement or boredom, as the case may be.

• I seem to recall that My-HIME was censored for the TV release and then de-censored for the DVD release. Either this isn’t the case, the US release is the TV release, or my memory is bad, because the amount and type of fanservice seems to be about what I remember from the fansubs.
• The fight at the end of episode one is incredibly awesome, and it reminds me of why I like this show in the first place.
• The middle of episode two, on the other hand, reminds me of why I almost didn’t watch this show, with the introduction in swift succession of such classic, deep characters as Nun Fetish, Maid Fetish, and Crippled Loli Fetish.
• And then there’s another awesome fight scene, which brings up another thought: Nagi is pure awesome, and at least thus far makes every scene he’s in better. He’s pure evil, playful, and just a fun character. I usually refer to him as Evil Kaworu (you know, from Eva) because of the character design, and fun fact: he has the same voice actor as the actual Kaworu. And Xellos from Slayers, it appears. Which I can totally see.
• And of course, the real evil that he does on this DVD is hard to spot at this point, but those who have seen the series should know what I’m talking about. Surprising to me is that it seems to imply Natsuki knows and doesn’t spill it, which is cold. (Please avoid spoilers in the comments, since my friend will probably read them and he hasn’t seen the rest of the series yet.)
• I had almost forgotten how utterly annoying Shiho was, since Otome-Shiho, at least in the eight or so episodes I watched in fansub, didn’t make me want to kill things whenever she was onscreen.
• I wanted to stand up and cheer when Natsuki shoots Nagi in episode 4. Every RPG player who’s ever had to deal with an obnoxious quest-giver mentor-type that the GM (or the game, for CRPGs) wouldn’t let you kill or even show up him/her has wanted to do that for a long time.
• A lot of times, My-HIME feels like two separate shows: ones a fairly mediocre school comedy with a handful of laughs, and the other is a totally awesome show about magical girls fighting while Yuki Kajiura music plays in the background. I kind of wish I could just get one of those series.
• Fortunately, I know there’s a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the former coming in the second half of the series. Which makes it more easy to get through.
• My favorite thing about this series, though, is still watching a tiny girl wield a massively over-sized Stormbringer in a way that is vaguely plausible if you don’t think too hard.