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SyntheticPolygon posted:What about Kyoukai Senki is making it so boring that everyone watching it has mentioned that and talked about how it feels pretty half-baked but also so interesting that people are deeply examining the first two episodes to find out the smallest details about its setting. the opening text crawl mentioned birth rates and people smelled blood in the water i actually dunno if people said it's boring, but being half-baked and getting picked apart definitely go hand in hand. people wanna get the full depth of stupid, or uncover what's really there, or just get worked up. same thing happened with 86. i suppose if it is boring, something like dissecting it is the only thing those people could do with it. dogsicle fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 13:07
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Yeah I guess if it's got the vibe of being pretty weak or just kinda weird that's enough reason for people to be digging into it even if there's not much there. Just seemed a bit early in the season to be picking out what is making the show tick but I suppose that doesn't really matter too much.
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Oct 13, 2021 13:37
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I don't know if dropping the birthrate thing is a specific commentary on Japanese populations in service of some kind of Great Replacement theory as opposed to just, like, one of the big crises currently looming in the Japanese zeitgeist generally. It's like if one of our shows mentioned the villain manipulating the media or something and people immediately jumped to Q.
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Oct 13, 2021 14:35
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Caphi posted:I don't know if dropping the birthrate thing is a specific commentary on Japanese populations in service of some kind of Great Replacement theory as opposed to just, like, one of the big crises currently looming in the Japanese zeitgeist generally. It's like if one of our shows mentioned the villain manipulating the media or something and people immediately jumped to Q. The Japanese birthrate isn't actually that far off from that of most other developed countries - the difference is that Japan's got a rock-bottom immigration rate, so it's causing more problems with a shrinking, ageing population. 'Have more babies or foreigners will literally invade us' is exactly as much of a xenophobic far-right trope in Japan as it is anywhere else - it's just a bit more institutionally entrenched.
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Oct 13, 2021 14:41
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Why are people.always so horny to find secret fascism in the media they consume. Is there some bounty I'm unaware of?
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Oct 13, 2021 15:06
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GorfZaplen posted:Why are people.always so horny to find secret fascism in the media they consume. Is there some bounty I'm unaware of? Chatting about a show's themes and message is pretty basic (especially in mecha anime, which has been about giant metaphors beating the poo poo out of each other from pretty much day one), and unfortunately, there isn't much else that this particular show is putting out there.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:15
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we can rank the mascots and discuss whether it's cowardly that the spear using mech is piloted by s girl
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Oct 13, 2021 15:17
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dogsicle posted:we can rank the mascots and discuss whether it's cowardly that the spear using mech is piloted by s girl Is it a spear or a naginata? I would have assumed it was a naginata given... well... just about everything else about the show.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:20
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to me a spear is a rectangle and a naginata is a square 
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Oct 13, 2021 15:40
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Yup, it's a naginata. Also, they're actually releasing a model kit of the Bunyip Boomerang, which is kind of delightful.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:47
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Darth Walrus posted:Chatting about a show's themes and message is pretty basic (especially in mecha anime, which has been about giant metaphors beating the poo poo out of each other from pretty much day one), and unfortunately, there isn't much else that this particular show is putting out there. Honestly this is a big reason I've fallen off.of the mecha fandom recently, mecha fans will literally make poo poo up in their heads so they can write 20000 words about it.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:26
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If a show is boring just don't watch it. You don't have to do this to yourself just because it has a robot.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:34
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Discounting the anchor baby great replacement theory it is still quite easy to read a nationalist xenophobic bent to the premise. Domestic social issues leading to calls for help only to get balkanized by other global powers isn't an exclusively Japanese thing given the etymology of the word balkanized itself. But when it is applied to a Japanese context and then base your show around liberation from foreign oppressors using advanced technology that draws on traditional iconography and symbols of martial status you're pretty much inviting viewers to draw comparisons and apply real world attitudes to the show's admittedly hazy politics.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:42
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Darth Walrus posted:The opening exposition leans uncomfortably close to the subject in a way that just... never quite gets contradicted by any saner interpretation.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:05
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well, this show has never denied that it was written by adolf hitler's ghost, so i've decided that it is. it's really hosed up that it's written by adolf hitler's ghost. adolf hitler was from russia, right?
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Oct 13, 2021 17:05
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if you want to critically discuss a mediocre mecha anime with confusing politics at least talk about something like l-gaim, the show that changes whether it thinks women should get in the kitchen or are actually horrifically abused and deserve better public awareness and rights every twenty episodes and is fully out so there is actually a full story to analyze the confusing and messy themes of instead of just poking at corners of the first two episodes because you're bored
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Oct 13, 2021 17:08
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Excited to hear about the non-far-right explanations for a show called Warrior of the Borderline where teenagers must liberate Japan from foreign occupation and restore its dignity and culture after the country was left vulnerable by declining birthdates. I mean, come the gently caress on, people.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:19
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Darth Walrus posted:Excited to hear about the non-far-right explanations for a show called Warrior of the Borderline where teenagers must liberate Japan from foreign occupation and restore its dignity and culture after the country was left vulnerable by declining birthdates. 2) its not xenophobic to acknowledge japan's declining birth rate makes it specifically vulnerable to that kind of thing. 3) 'great replacement theory' is not at all what youre describing 4) sunrise wanted a mecha show to be popular so they aimlessly aped geass's premise with no specific endgoal in mind, only they made the protagonist japanese instead of a white guy manipulating the japanese for his own end. which, as we all know, japanese people making a japanese person the protagonist is hosed up. like im not gonna say its not a little nationalistic cause it is, but there's a long road between 'japan rules and itd be bad if japan was less japanese, culturally' and 'i think half-white babies are the work of the devil' Endorph fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 17:27
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5)quote:Don't call black people colonizers when they disagree with you. User loses posting privileges for 1 week.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:30
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   l-gaim owns because they have the main character explain his deep theory on why the villain is a woman 33 episodes in, saying he thinks she is a woman because women create the future, which gives them more symbolic power and influence than men, and then like ten episodes later the reveal is that the villain is not a woman, they are a man who looks like a woman. except actually they're not a man who looks like a woman, they're a woman being mind controlled by a man to think she is the man who is mind controlling her, and the man who is mind controlling her is doing it because he doesn't want to be the emperor of space, he wants to be a cool intergalactic black market arms dealer cause it's way more fun than being the emperor of space and he thinks manipulating and mind controlling women is super fun also everyone should watch and talk about l-gaim, i've watched like a dozen tomino anime and l-gaim is the most insane and confusing and it's also literally the longest mecha one he's ever made by like three full episodes. i'm gonna watch the hour long ova setting up a sequel that never happened today The Colonel fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 17:32
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its time, for l-gaim
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Oct 13, 2021 17:33
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https://files.catbox.moe/8dr2mi.mp4
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Oct 13, 2021 17:35
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Endorph posted:1) american cultural overreach is a real problem that has and continues to affect japan, its not xenophobic to say its a shame when something traditional or with a long history gets replaced by something that appeals more to tourists or is more 'americanized,' which is something that happens fairly often, on a micro level with individual small businesses to a macro level with language ... no, 'the surrounding nations will literally occupy, conquer, and carve us up if we don't have enough babies' is incredibly xenophobic. There's a bit of a difference between your local publishing company choosing to alter its product to appeal to an international market and a squad of Bunyip Boomarangs demolishing your house and rounding up your (insufficiently large) family to serve the chosen citizens of Greater Australia.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:39
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Full Flat, Full Frontal's impotent cousin.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:40
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Darth Walrus posted:... no, 'the surrounding nations will literally occupy, conquer, and carve us up if we don't have enough babies' is incredibly xenophobic. 2) that is what multiple world governments would do if japan was a failing state yes. the only part that's nationalistic is acting like they'd all coalesce into one giant anti-japan blob.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:42
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It owns that halfway through the series Kyao inexplicably starts doing these introspective monologues at the start of episodes, like Tomino ended up liking his actor enough to invent more lines for him. Then a year later he cast him as one of the most evil villains in Zeta Gundam.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:48
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Arc Hammer posted:Full Flat, Full Frontal's impotent cousin. full flat is a depressed 100+ year old bi woman who lives on an all-women satellite where her soldiers spend every single waking moment of every single day dancing to disco, half of the station is literally just infinite unending disco parties, you cannot commute from one end of the station to the other without seeing people disco dancing through a window. she also is motivated to fight everyone because she's emotionally shattered from being emotionally manipulated and abused by a man she loved and the only thing that begins to bring back her capacity for human empathy and get her to start allying herself with the heroes is her wish to protect women, including protecting the women daba knows from being manipulated and abused like she was. she is legitimately one of the best, most unique and interesting mecha anime characters tomino has ever created and also half of her writing is completely incoherent and makes no sense and they dont even begin to explain some of her more bizarre logic or her disco satellite, and she saves the day at the end because after randomly getting tragically squashed by a robot it turns out she become a brain wave ghost who hijacks the villain's mind control system to save her girlfriend by possessing her
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Oct 13, 2021 17:49
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The Colonel posted:
One of the things i love about old tomino shows is how you can clearly see him taking concepts from one series into the next. I never watched L-Gaim but what little I know clearly paints it as the missing link between Dunbine and Zeta in the evolutionary tree of his work and, well, looking it up, it is  .
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Oct 13, 2021 17:49
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Endorph posted:1) the show also said 'failing economic policies' It did, but those are vague while declining birthrates and an ageing population are specific. Unless they go into a whole thing about how the last prime minister of Japan blew all the country's money on NFT speculation, it seems sensible to focus on the stuff they actually detailed. The issue isn't so much what happens when a state collapses - we've all seen plenty of examples of that in the past few decades - it's how they explained the state collapsing. Spain has a lower fertility rate than Japan, and when a Spanish author goes 'our country will be destroyed by the rest of the world unless we have more Spanish babies and defend our borders', everyone knows exactly what to call that.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:50
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i mean 'declining birth rates and an aging population' are exactly as vague. it does not at all get into the reasons why or what should have been done to prevent it. if theyre blaming the government for economic policies in the same sentence, aren't they also functionally blaming the government for the declining birth rate, not the people? and also you keep putting 50 words into the writers' mouths. they didn't say anything about 'defending our borders' and the way the two statements are tied together clearly frames the declining birth rate as an economic problem, not a military one.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:52
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GimmickMan posted:One of the things i love about old tomino shows is how you can clearly see him taking concepts from one series into the next. I never watched L-Gaim but what little I know clearly paints it as the missing link between Dunbine and Zeta in the evolutionary tree of his work and, well, looking it up, it is l-gaim is bits and pieces from dunbine, zeta, victory and especially when it comes to weird goofball comedy and strange pacing, zz gundam. it's a soup of plot ideas tomino came up with in the bathroom that day and the shifts in tone and structure are so radical that it really actually just randomly between two episodes can go from one of the most fun space adventure anime, to a really plodding and middling space war anime that brings up as many new narrative threads as it drops and is weirdly obsessed with men shouting about how women don't belong in war, to a show about how men mistreat and toss away women at their leisure and need a better capacity to empathize with them i actually don't think there's like. a single mecha anime. that is as inconsistent as l-gaim in every possible respect. it's a fascinating show to watch for that though it does also make it like mentally exhausting
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Oct 13, 2021 17:59
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Endorph posted:i mean 'declining birth rates and an aging population' are exactly as vague. it does not at all get into the reasons why or what should have been done to prevent it. if theyre blaming the government for economic policies in the same sentence, aren't they also functionally blaming the government for the declining birth rate, not the people? The show is called Soldier of the Borderline, and frames the struggle for independence and national dignity as a military one (with giant samurai robots). It doesn't exactly seem like a reach to say that they're tying together fertility, economic strength, and military strength. And yeah, the implication is that declining birth-rates and an ageing population are as much a failure of the government as the military and economic weakness that let Japan's neighbours roll in and take over. That's hardly a contradiction to a far-right message.
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Oct 13, 2021 17:59
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Japan as an economically ailing client state that's occupied by a foreign military isn't some far-flung ukoyu dantai nughtmare, it's just US-Japan relations in 2021
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Oct 13, 2021 18:08
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Frankly it's quite chuddish of you not to support this anti-imperialist action of the vulnerable Japanese people depicted in this show! Funny how it's always American posters that get super bent out of shape about this stuff!
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Oct 13, 2021 18:17
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The Colonel posted:
This just got added to my watch list.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:40
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The Colonel posted:l-gaim is bits and pieces from dunbine, zeta, victory and especially when it comes to weird goofball comedy and strange pacing, zz gundam. it's a soup of plot ideas tomino came up with in the bathroom that day and the shifts in tone and structure are so radical that it really actually just randomly between two episodes can go from one of the most fun space adventure anime, to a really plodding and middling space war anime that brings up as many new narrative threads as it drops and is weirdly obsessed with men shouting about how women don't belong in war, to a show about how men mistreat and toss away women at their leisure and need a better capacity to empathize with them There's also Nagano's own creative involvement in the thing, which also muddies the waters with regards to L-Gaim's theming. Quite a bit near the end seems like stuff he'd later follow up on in Five Star Stories.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:02
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Darth Walrus posted:... no, 'the surrounding nations will literally occupy, conquer, and carve us up if we don't have enough babies' is incredibly xenophobic. There's a bit of a difference between your local publishing company choosing to alter its product to appeal to an international market and a squad of Bunyip Boomarangs demolishing your house and rounding up your (insufficiently large) family to serve the chosen citizens of Greater Australia. https://www.animefeminist.com/amaim-warrior-at-the-borderline-episode-1/ https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2021/fall/amaim-warrior-at-the-borderline/.177548 Please don't let this forum turn into Reddit, where we can only gush about production values and how hot the characters are.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:08
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Noted bastions of informed takes, animefeminist and animenewsnetwork.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:19
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i dont think you have to be an uncritical fan to be wary of heavily extrapolating political intent from episode 1 of a 24 episode series
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Oct 13, 2021 19:22
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watched the l-gaim ova. it's actually kind of surreal, like it goes beyond gundam endless waltz levels of retconning and inserting stuff in, the entire thing takes place in episode 15 except it's an alt universe version of episode 15 with a bunch of new characters and where the events of the previous and later episodes couldn't have possibly happened. really cool animation that gets kinda trippy though and the villain is a guy who operates his heavy metal by playing a keyboard 
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Oct 13, 2021 19:25
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