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Reminalt posted:I know how you feel, I wish they would just charge me and get it over with so I can wash myself clean. In relation to this trailer, Rebellion will apparently be coming to select US theatres. Here's to hoping there's one nearby.
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Jul 23, 2013 05:43
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He Who Dares posted:In relation to this trailer, Rebellion will apparently be coming to select US theatres. This had better come to Canada as well. I'm looking forward to this movie, due to it not just combining all the episodes.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:15
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He Who Dares posted:In relation to this trailer, Rebellion will apparently be coming to select US theatres. Oh man that looks good. I might have to figure out how to get to the closest one to where I live (which will probably be Chicago, if movies 1 and 2 were any indication). Also 'The Wait is Over' no it isn't 
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Jul 24, 2013 02:23
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FlamingRok posted:This had better come to Canada as well. I'm looking forward to this movie, due to it not just combining all the episodes. Me too. I can't imagine why they wouldn't show them here though. I mean, they did show the first two movies in theaters. I just hope I'm not in midterms or exams when they come out.
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Jul 24, 2013 02:43
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Kwyndig posted:Oh man that looks good. I might have to figure out how to get to the closest one to where I live (which will probably be Chicago, if movies 1 and 2 were any indication). Yeah, looks like I might be carpooling with some people to Chicago to see it. However, the first two got subsequent releases in closer theatres in November/December/January. Here's (I believe) the complete list of theatres outside of Japan where the first two were shown: http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Madoka_Magica_Movie#Worldwide_premiere
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Jul 24, 2013 03:59
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Orika Magica released here just the other day and it was... Okay. I really can't say anything else about it, transforming into a catgirl seems kinda dumb, it overplays the serious darkness of the anime and gets a bit too gory at times. Great if you liked Saya no Uta, but I have no idea where or how it fits in with the rest of the show. I will definitely recommend it over Kazumi though. Not a lot of fan-service and it shows what the witches looked as like magical girls prior. And the yandere faces are amazing. Whoever draws this knows how to draw psycho girls.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:08
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My Rightstuf order of the movies shipped today. If yours hasn't yet, you can probably expect it to soon.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:14
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DarkHamsterlord posted:My Rightstuf order of the movies shipped today. If yours hasn't yet, you can probably expect it to soon. Due to being within about two or three hours drive of RightStuf's distribution center I'm getting mine later this afternoon (my order is literally sitting in my local post office). For some reason the people there forget that, hey, they can send my release date stuff out a little later and still have it arrive by expected date 
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Jul 26, 2013 08:43
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DarkHamsterlord posted:My Rightstuf order of the movies shipped today. If yours hasn't yet, you can probably expect it to soon. Mine shipped a couple of days ago, I should be getting it later today.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:52
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Requireshate is all aboard the Madokatrain https://requireshate.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/puella-magi-madoka-magica/ "Yeah, yeah, people’ve been after me to review this forever. I’ve been watching the recap movies so what the hell, might as well get on it. So there’ve been endless terabytes of pixels spilled over this show, about how it subverts the magical girl genre and whatnot, blah blah grimdark very popular with male nerds due to said grimdark/subversion, etc etc. You know what, though? Those fucks are wrong. Puella Magi Madoka Magica stays absolutely true to the genre. There’ve been analyses to the tune of the series being essentially misogynistic in its portrayal of teenage girls as ticking time-bombs who inevitably become psychopathic evil forces, and apparently the writers and producers might’ve said something to indicate sexist intentions (?)–I’ve never really delved into those and can’t find the relevant quotes. But let’s say the author is dead and go from there. While Kyubey is an alien, it is coded more or less as male–and the structure with which it selects victims for contracts patriarchal: it and its fellow incubators (there are others, apparently, though dunno if the gazillion manga spin-offs are canon and maybe there’s a female incubator somewhere) choose only young girls to harvest energy and stave off universal entropy. The view of female emotions and passions as frightening and explosive closely mirrors that of our own society, where women are meant to be meek from birth to death. There’s limited to no support for teenage girls who undergo difficult experiences. Instead, their emotions are dismissed and trivialized as too sensitive, hysterical, ridiculous, and laughable. Women are barely real people, teenage girls even less so. Given this, it’s apt to view the transformation of girls into witches as a response to that unbearable tension. Living in the patriarchy as teenage girls is traumatic, and some girls can and will lash out. Puella Magi literalizes this idea. The girl retreats into her internal safe space, the witch barrier, while lashing out at the world that has failed her; she is then destroyed by a magical girl, who has internalized patriarchal pressure and seeks to subdue other girls who are “acting out unacceptably.” The most powerful witch Walpurgis Night, according to an interview with Urobuchi: It has the destructive power to bring about natural disasters powerful enough to blow away an entire town, but originally it was a single witch. It’s a witch that has grown from the combination of countless other witches. Walpurgis Night combines with other witches in the same way two powerful tornadoes are able to combine and become larger. It’s essentially a “conglomeration”-type witch. Because it’s so powerful, it rarely shows itself. I’m tempted to make a joke about Walpurgis Night being an allegorical magical girls’ rights movement that drew those girls together to destroy both the world and hopefully the alien species that’s perpetuating the contract system. Witchhood is typically associated with women: the third stage after maiden and mother. Madoka girls skip the motherhood part since they’re never allowed to reach adulthood before Kyubey’s contract destroys them, but they remain constrained by the remaining roles: the innocent maiden and the powerful crone/witch–and since female power is to be feared, the witches are of course “evil.” Kyubey keeps the transformation from magical girl to witch a secret, instructing the girls he recruits that the witches are irredeemable monsters rather than the product of PTSD. The narrative of course doesn’t offer possibilities for a reversal from witch to girl; as far as we know they are beyond being reasoned with, pure monstrous ids that destroy and consume–Madoka’s final witch form tries to annihilate earth itself, though like all other witches it has a specific vision: Witch of salvation. Her nature is mercy. She absorbs any life on the planet into her newly created heaven–her barrier. The only way to defeat this witch is to make the world free of misfortune. If there’s no grief in this world, she will believe this world is already a heaven. Madoka’s witch doesn’t destroy mindlessly; she wants to impose her inner utopia on an outside world that’s deeply hostile to women. It’s of some interest that official sources choose to call the witches’ dimension “barriers”–whether or not this is intentional it does carry the connotations that they exist as the witches’ defenses, adding to the idea that they are the witches’ safe space. The witches don’t leave their barriers ever–they can’t even seem to stay too far from these barriers’ center: if they can find the exit, magical girls can escape with relative ease. Familiars operate in these barriers to enforce the witches’ sense of security and to reinforce their vision of utopia, whether it is tea parties or rose gardens symbolizing the witch’s/girl’s coping mechanism. Several viewers consider adulthood in Puella presented as terrifying–but what’s really terrifying isn’t so much adulthood itself but the fact that, as teenage girls, reaching adulthood can be terrifying due to a lack of support and cultural denial of sympathy or empathy. Of the main characters, the girls who fall into despair tend to have no support network and their problems result directly from men: Kyoko’s father was an unstable fanatic who murdered his entire family, Sayaka centers her life around a male crush who treats her like trash and her moment of breakdown is instigated by faceless men being assholes about the women they’re exploiting (“dumb slut,” “You just can’t treat women like rational human beings”). She specifically lashes out at misogynistic men who confirm that the world, containing scum, isn’t worth protecting–and she is narratively demonified: she becomes a witch. Madoka, in contrast, has a loving family and more importantly a mother who’s close to and cares for her (possibly Madoka’s mother is the only adult in the series who has something useful to say, though like adults tend to be in media with child protagonists she is essentially ineffective)–she’s the only one throughout multiple timelines who remains the most idealistic to the bitter end. Homura, though without a support network, finds a home with the other magical girls and a raison d’etre in Madoka. These two are motivated by their bond for one another and they are the only two who successfully escape the cycle, Madoka by ultimately erasing it. How well that’ll turn out remains to be seen later this year when the third movie comes out, but it does stand that Madoka overthrows a system that specifically targets young girls and literally becomes an omnipotent deity who uses her cosmic powers to save all the girls that have been victimized by it past, present and future. It’s a celebration of the heart of the magical girl genre: the intense, deep bond between girls that makes anything possible–even godlike powers that rewrite the universe." Assepoester fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 10:27
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It feels as if though analyzing Madoka tends to reflect more on the person performing the analysis than say anything about the show.
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Jul 26, 2013 12:35
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I dunno what you mean dude, that seems like the basic text of the show to me.
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Jul 26, 2013 13:27
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I thought it was a pretty solid analysis with a few insights I hadn't considered before. I think he overdid it by saying it was specifically Kyoko's father and Kyosuke that destroyed Kyoko and Sayaka respectively (I don't see how Kyosuke treated her like trash, but he definitely did not give her her due respect), but I see where he's coming from. He didn't even touch on Mami though, no idea why. 
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Jul 26, 2013 15:13
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No convenient male to blame?
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Jul 26, 2013 16:04
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Eh, I kind of agree on Kyousuke. I mean, I don't think there was anything wrong with him not returning her feelings or dating Hitomi or that stuff, but even if you just look at him as a friend he treats her like poo poo. Smashing the MP3 (admittedly understandable), hardly seeming to appreciate her visits in general, checking out without telling her, etc.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:10
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That's some really weird bitter projections about some of the most obvious critical analysis I've ever read. "Male blaming" hahaha.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:13
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Insurrectionist posted:Eh, I kind of agree on Kyousuke. I mean, I don't think there was anything wrong with him not returning her feelings or dating Hitomi or that stuff, but even if you just look at him as a friend he treats her like poo poo. Smashing the MP3 (admittedly understandable), hardly seeming to appreciate her visits in general, checking out without telling her, etc. I wouldn't really call that treating her like poo poo though. He just didn't recognize any of what she'd done for him, which is still far better than actively being a dick. Most likely Kyosuke's ignorance was the final nail in the coffin for her sanity, but the incident on the train was the catalyst for her demise.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:49
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ViggyNash posted:I wouldn't really call that treating her like poo poo though. He just didn't recognize any of what she'd done for him, which is still far better than actively being a dick. Most likely Kyosuke's ignorance was the final nail in the coffin for her sanity, but the incident on the train was the catalyst for her demise. I felt that Kyousuke's ignorance wasn't so much a hit to her as what it caused, with Hitomi coming out of left field and dating Kyousuke. That, combined with the girl's discovery of the true nature of the Soul Gems were the catalyst, while the train incident was the final nail in the coffin. I thought that her whole "she probably works so hard to make you happy, and you treat her like poo poo" monologue was a reaction to Kyousuke's behavior, or at alluding to it.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:01
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The only part I can actively fault him in is just up and leaving the hospital without telling her. That's just plain lack of respect. The rest can be at least partially excused.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:43
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The bit about Kyuubey "coding as more or less male" seems rather dodgy and yet vital for the analysis of the incubator system as patriarchal.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:14
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Paracelsus posted:The bit about Kyuubey "coding as more or less male" seems rather dodgy and yet vital for the analysis of the incubator system as patriarchal. It's kind of debatable, but the "rodent mascot" character type is generally male, and I've seen a lot more people referring to Kyubey as "he" than as "she". Even Requires Hate has a point sometimes.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:28
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Silver2195 posted:It's kind of debatable, but the "rodent mascot" character type is generally male, and I've seen a lot more people referring to Kyubey as "he" than as "she". There's certainly an argument to be made there, but RH just brushes past it in an equivocal manner then proceeds to use it as a foundational element. It comes across as "exploitation of women, therefore patriarchy," which is rather silly.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:57
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Paracelsus posted:He is the usual gender-neutral term in English, though, and nothing explicitly signifies Kyuubey as female so the only reason to use "she" is having a female VA. Kyuubey came across as un-gendered to me, being a Lovecraftian entity whose perspective is mostly orthogonal to humanity's. And it's not like there aren't prominent examples of female guide animals; Luna from Sailor Moon is the first that comes to mind. In any event, none of that is the text itself, it's people talking about the text. Yea, he's definitely gender neutral. There's no way that he(it, technically) can exist as part of a species where emotions don't exist and have genders. We, as humans, refer to him as a male since we need to apply some concept of gender in order to comprehend him as a character. Even in stories where inanimate objects are used as characters (Pixar's Cars for an example) we generally assign a gender to each character, despite inanimate objects having no inherent gender. RH definitely tried to push the idea of a patriarchy and made a couple baseless assumptions. The evil bunny cat is definitely not the analogy he wants it to be.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:11
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ViggyNash posted:The evil bunny cat is definitely not the analogy he wants it to be.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:19
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Who the hell is requires hate and why are we suddenly expected to care what this anonymous blog-owning stranger thinks about an anim?ViggyNash posted:There's no way that he(it, technically) can exist as part of a species where emotions don't exist and have genders. Why not? Pretty sure you can have a gender without having emotions.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:31
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Namtab posted:Why not? Pretty sure you can have a gender without having emotions. The whole point of gender, for mammals, is sexual relations for reproduction. That kinda requires emotion for both sides to want to do it in the first place. On the other hand, evil bunny cat is a clone and has no understanding of emotion whatsoever. Even if there are technical genders within his species, they don't mean anything.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:37
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ViggyNash posted:The whole point of gender, for mammals, is sexual relations for reproduction. That kinda requires emotion for both sides to want to do it in the first place. On the other hand, evil bunny cat is a clone and has no understanding of emotion whatsoever. Even if there are technical genders within his species, they don't mean anything. The hell are you talking about? Many species of plant have sexes. Emotion is not a prerequisite.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:48
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I actually do agree that, from a strict in-universe point of view, Kyubey has no gender. I think this is outright stated in some side material that no one really cares about.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:49
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Silver2195 posted:I actually do agree that, from a strict in-universe point of view, Kyubey has no gender. I think this is outright stated in some side material that no one really cares about. Kyubey refers to himself as genderless in the second drama CD, and Urobuchi says the same in the Blu-Ray commentary.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:51
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Kyubey is (indirectly, incidentally) patriarchal because he's associated with the most stifling and mechanical aspects of Japanese society/education, which also happens to be kinda sexist. He doesn't need to be male for that, but it's an easy association to make.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:51
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The hell are you talking about? I was gonna make this point except insects so thanks for beating me to it with a better example.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:53
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Kyubey is (indirectly, incidentally) patriarchal because he's associated with the most stifling and mechanical aspects of Japanese society/education, which also happens to be kinda sexist. He doesn't need to be male for that, but it's an easy association to make. It's crazy that people go out of their way to not understand this.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:57
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The hell are you talking about? Evil bunny cat is not a plant. As far as we can tell he's either a mammal or something entirely artificial. As far as mammals go, gender doesn't mean much without emotion. You could argue that people can reproduce without any emotional input, but couldn't instinct be considered a fundamental emotion? In that case the fact that mammals feel the need to mate requires the concept of emotion. Ultimately, my point is that within the story's context it isn't clear whether or not he has a gender, but even if he does it doesn't really play into the plot in any way. RH is making the assumption that he's a male in order to support his perspective. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Kyubey is (indirectly, incidentally) patriarchal because he's associated with the most stifling and mechanical aspects of Japanese society/education, which also happens to be kinda sexist. He doesn't need to be male for that, but it's an easy association to make. I guess he could be interpreted that way. That's a far better interpretation than assuming he's male.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:58
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Mordaedil posted:It feels as if though analyzing fiction tends to reflect more on the person performing the analysis than say anything about the work. You're well on your way to understanding academic English 
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Jul 26, 2013 20:02
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ViggyNash posted:... but couldn't instinct be considered a fundamental emotion? Not really. Emotion is a subjective conscious state; instinct refers to behaviors. While all mammals probably do have subjective experiences, it's not a prerequisite for instinctive behavior, including sex and reproduction. All of which is kind of silly and beside the point since Kyubey's an alien who eats crystallized despair and maintains continuity of consciousness after exploding in a shower of guts. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 20:06
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ViggyNash posted:Evil bunny cat is not a plant. Your argument is, of course, based on the assumption that kyubey is a mammal, which seems rather flawed seeing as he's an alien. Maybe he's an insect? E: Maybe you're posting out of your arse again?
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Jul 26, 2013 20:06
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A Gnarlacious Bro posted:It's crazy that people go out of their way to not understand this.
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Jul 26, 2013 20:22
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Paracelsus posted:It depends on how much of a correlation->causation jump you're willing to make. Pretty much all societies are patriarchal to some extent, and I have yet to see a society that isn't stifling, but the latter seems to frequently stem from reasons that have less to do with patriarchy than with forces that would exist regardless of which gender is in charge. Women in the middle east not being allowed to drive or facing violence because they seek an education is certainly stifling patriarchy, but people being assholes to each other and growing up being hard and scary are less a product of a particular societal system than they are an inevitable product of human individuality. Laying everything at the feet of patriarchy (or retreating to the uselessly broad category of "kyriarchy") is naive and usually self-serving, since it tends to coincide with a suggestion that putting people like the speaker in charge will somehow resolve all contradictions instead of just giving us new bunch of assholes in charge. Sounds like a pretty good excuse to never question the dictates of authority or challenge current systems of power, but I don't want to get into that. This is a show with a predominately young female cast, being manipulated and exploited by a autocrat, simultaneously shaming them for emotion while governing the context that it develops in, focusing on resistance against the entire system. I guess it's understandable that the terminology of feminism might make you queasy but that essay was a pretty bare bones reading of the text as it is with some self-sourced elaboration on why "It’s a celebration of the heart of the magical girl genre: the intense, deep bond between girls that makes anything possible–even godlike powers that rewrite the universe."
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Jul 26, 2013 20:38
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A Gnarlacious Bro posted:Sounds like a pretty good excuse to never question the dictates of authority or challenge current systems of power, but I don't want to get into that. Coincidentally, one of my main beefs with critical theory is that its practitioners often evaluate arguments not by whether those arguments are internally consistent or based on even semi-reliable observation, but instead by the extent to which the arguments, if accepted, would justify overthrowing the current system and putting the speaker or someone who agrees with them in charge. Overthrowing a bad system isn't the end of things, and can easily lead to worse outcomes (especially if it's done so under pretenses that were mostly geared to the acquisition of power). To tie things back into the works of Urobochi for a second, in Psycho-Pass the protagonist declines to publicize the information that would completely undermine the SYBIL system, because she realizes that there isn't a viable follow-up that wouldn't end in disorder and mass starvation. And in that case the autocrat even has a distinct tendency to be portrayed as female. Evaluated in that light, I'm skeptical of the idea that Urobochi considers patriarchy to be the unique source of stifling oppression in the world such that it must be overthrown at all costs and replaced with a more female-centric system. And before you bring up death of the author, RH was willing to look at other statements by Urobochi (although didn't find them), so evidently there's still a bit of life in the author yet. quote:I guess it's understandable that the terminology of feminism might make you queasy but that essay was a pretty bare bones reading of the text as it is with some self-sourced elaboration on why "It’s a celebration of the heart of the magical girl genre: the intense, deep bond between girls that makes anything possible–even godlike powers that rewrite the universe."
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Jul 26, 2013 22:41
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Well, I got my box set in today!  Apologies for blurry cellphone pics.
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Jul 27, 2013 02:44
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