Excellent fights part 1 Deku vs Muscular

One of the shows I have been watching recently is the most recent season of  Boku no hero academia. I was told by people that are familiar with the manga the anime was based on that there was some really awesome content coming up and when I watched episode 42 I think I knew what they were talking about. However I was rather tired when I watched said episode and felt that I wasn't as hyped as I should be so I decided to watch the episode again. Given the that I knew what to expect and I was able to watch it in a more detached manner and I wondered exactly made this a good fight.

This is not to say that it is a bad episode but I noticed that it lacked several things that people consider elements of a good conflict are missing in the Deku vs Muscular fight. Muscular is hardly an interesting or complex villain (Not that the show is lacking in interesting characters). It wasn't a particularly technical or long fight; it was mostly a fist fight between two rather strong people.

I felt like was like a fight you see in episode 1 of many shonen action shows. The hero fights an ill defined villain and wins because the hero has a new power up, usually the hero gaining the powers that they will have for rest of the show. In this case all for one turned out to be stronger at a crucial moment than previously expected.

However this conflict was also the first time that Deku fought a super-villain on his own in this show. It was also a fight that he couldn't run away from or lose without consequence. This differentiates this conflict from  previous battles such as the tournament arc or the fight with Stain. It was as though the show had training wheels on Deku for the previous 41 episodes and this was the episode when those training wheels came off. In action there is a desire to escalate with each fight. However this is a clever use of a temporary limitation to give the feeling of escalation without making Muscular more powerful.

It behooves me to mention the presence of Kota in this conflict as even though he has only a minor effect on the flow of the fight he gives it a lot of weight. First off he is part of the reason Deku can't simply run away. More importantly he first civilian that Deku ever saves. While it is common for a protagonist to save someone weaker than them in a shonen action series but it has a special weight in this show. If you have even the slightest familiarity with this series you know that Izuku's reason for being is to be a great hero who saves everyone and banishes fear like his personal hero All Might. Thus this is  not only the first time Deku fight a villain one on one, it is also the first time he saves a person and thus acts like All Might.

Thus I think I made it clear that the value of a fight is not only the attacks used but also the build up and potential for character growth that it presents. 

Personal metrics 2 the good and bad of ninja scroll

It has been some time but I have felt that it has been to long since I posted a personal metrics post. It is partially because I think these posts make my usual reviews more worthwhile and partially because it gives me something else to post about other than reviews and the seasonal preview.

A long time ago there was a time called the nineties and everything was extreme to the max. Anime was new and one of the few anime movies we could get from a mystical place called a video rental store (it was like a redbox you could walk into) was a movie called Ninja scroll. It was a movie with a bunch of sex and violence and a bare-bones plot. It was the beloved classic of everyone's inner teenage boy. Then years later there was a thirteen episode television show done about ninja scroll and that tv show wasn't so well beloved. The question is why.

My belief is that ninja scroll was never really anything significant in terms of plot or character and was never intended to be. The difference in a movie is only about an hour and a half long and it only needs enough plot to string fights together. The pacing of a television show simply can't work with the simple diet of adrenaline the way a movie can as television has the natural cool down point that an end of an episode is. However as fun as a movie that is mostly only battles with a little plot for glue might be I tend to only give out bronze awards to them. 

We have lived with Cancer for this long

Anime is a hobby and for some reason people love to complain about their hobbies.  One of the more common complaints that I have heard is that moe anime shows are the cancer that is killing the anime industry and how everything was so much better in the 1990’s. To those that think I posit a counter argument in the show Cyberteam in Akihabara. 

To put it simply Cyberteam in Akihabara is not a good show. This is not a show like Madoka Magica or Tora Dora that are examples of how anime shows of all genres have their gems and excellent works. It is a rather generic magical girl show with some tacked on fan service and stupid looking merchandising toy called a Patapi.

Why do I bring up Cyberteam in Akihabara in the whole moe debate? I mention this show because it first aired in 1998 alongside such classics as Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. Yet somehow the argument that Cyberteam In Akihabara was ruining the anime industry despite it being no better than your usual little sister show or four girls who do nothing type of show that is supposedly some sort of tumor ruining the anime industry.

This leads me to the crux of my argument, anime has always had it’s good shows and not so good shows and the former exist regardless of the later types of shows. Sturgeon’s law exists for every type of art and anime is no exception. In fact trying to list more than five good anime shows from the golden year of 1998 requires bending perception via nostalgia glasses to list Outlaw Star as anything better than average and including Card Captor Sakura in your list (which would be odd if you are trying to project a white hot hatred of all things moe). 

So in conclusion, no show or trend can ruin a good show or the industry because bad shows have always existed and moe can’t kill the industry because even if you could call it a cancer it can’t be the cancer killing the industry for we have lived with this “so called” cancer so long and it hasn’t’ come close to killing the anime industry yet.

Survival games and moral choices

You don't get many editorials about your so I would think you would be a bit more interested

 

One of the more common complaints about Stella c3 bu was that it was a show that didn't know what it wanted to be. I think part of the problem is that it wasn't really a conventional anime show or even a conventional experimental anime show (the idea of what passes for a conventional experimental show is it's own topic that I will cover in the future). However it did something so very right in the advancement of gender equality that I think that it deserves mention.

 

One of the main problems with discussions of gender in anime or media in general is that unless some art piece crosses one of a few rather set lines in which interested parties will usually usually offer their almost canned outrage but other than that the wider idea of gender is generally left unexamined and thus little if any real progress is made or understanding is reached and most of our predispositions remain unexamined.

 

Even through there is no real villains in c3bu consider how female villains are often treated in media. Most often they are given the angst ridden back stories and easily end up joining the hero in the end. There is even a trope associated with this the high heel face turn (the link is here). While at first may look like a good thing, usually under some guise of violence against women is wrong or something, but in fact it demeans women by making them look as through they are incapable of true moral choice. What is even worse is that many so called feminists will ignore this because it grants them a type of leniecy for misdeeds.

 

How does this all connect to c3bu? First of all think of the show's nominal villain, Rin. While at first she appears to be a cardboard jerk and is later revealed to be a deeper character the redemption tropes do not apply. The most obvious reason is that she never changes moral positions, her positions are simply shown in a different light. This gives her a sense of dignity that the high heel face turn never could.

 

The character that I really want to talk about though is Yura. Her character is something that I rarely if ever see in any characters, much less female ones. She is a main character who is allowed to be corrupted by her own choices and is only redeemed when she realizes her own faults. This causes her to fail as not only the "strong female character" but also severely undercuts if not destroys her status as an innocent moe character. Given that Yura ended up failing to live up to these standards it is no wonder the show tanked in sales. However that very fact is something that made Yura so very human and unique as a character.

Awesome characters 1 Hikigaya Hachiman

Our protagonist

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU(At least that is what they are calling it on Crunchy roll) is one of my favorite shows in the spring season and unlike Attack on Titan and Gargantia I don't feel that it has been hyped enough. I have found the show's biggest strength is that it takes many of the tropes and characters you see in anime romantic comedies and light novels and deconstructs them. I feel that this is very evident in the main character Hikigaya Hachiman.

I remember a few years ago I was able to greatly alter if not win a debate about feminism and Umineko no Koro ni with the idea that oppresion does not make you a better person. The same principle applies to Hikigaya. All too often in anime we have a main character who is not only dateless but also bereft of friends, yet they suffer no emotional backlash from their sorry state. Hikigaya is not only an interesting twist on the blank anime protagonist his since of bitterness and negativity make him more relatable than your average so called anime nerd protagonist.

Not only is he relatable to darker nature of many of us his attitude is one that is perfect for novels. He has a lot of inner monologue and narration, which is common for novel works. Such works are best served by a main character which a strong voice and Hikigaya's unrelenting pessimism gives us just that voice.

Yet another way Hikigaya makes (title) so even better is the fact that his antisocial nature really does put the brakes on any romance happening in the show. In most romantic shows the main relationship is dragged out so the show can make more money simply by being longer. However with (title) simply not emotionally capable of committing to either Yukino or Yui until he makes some rather drastic personal changes. By the end of he show you she the beginnings of those changes and a slight change in his relationships but that feels natural. In short when it comes to romantic comedy protagonists sometimes bitter is much better taste than bland.

Hunter x Hunter sometimes a boys club isn't so bad

Note this article contains spoilers up to episode 25

Notice anything missing?

In some defiance of my usual anime viewing habits I have started watching Hunter x Hunter. I say this is unusual as I don't normally pick up a nearly two years old show and I almost never mini marathon twenty five episodes of a show in about two weeks. However I found the new Hunter x Hunter series to be quite interesting as thus worth this kind of treatment. I find this series to be quite interesting for several different reasons but the one I would like to talk about now is a bit about the show's view on gender.

I think the most important thing to remember about this show is that Hunter x Hunter is a shonen adventure show. This is to say that this is show aimed at the young male demographic with the intent of entertaining the prospective audience with action and in the case of this particular show thinking puzzles. I have seen several such shows (my knowledge is not exhaustive partially because of the fact that such shows are so incredibly long) and I have noticed a few things that are different about it. Noticeably the lack of a female character in the main cast, and I think that is a good thing.

The tendency with females cast in entertainment directed at males is to label as love interests for the main character. While this is all well and good for some shows, the fact of the matter is not all shows place enough focus on the idea of romantic relationships to warrant their inclusion.

Moreover, the lack of a love interest also creates an important lesson for the boys and younger men for whom this show is targeted. Having goals and working to achieve them doesn't always net you a woman for your effort and life shouldn't always center around finding a love interest. Oftentimes critics will rankle at the idea of a strong female character getting a love interest to the point where they begin to complain when they start noticing the opposite sex. Given this wouldn't one also say that it is a good policy to have high profile chaste male characters as well?

Also there is the issue of what happens after the hunter exam in episodes twenty one through twenty five. In these episodes Killua is manipulated into returning home only only to have the rest of the main cast follow him and attempt to break Killua free from the control of his family. This is very clearly a rescue arc. I can't but think that if there was a female character in the main cast of Hunter x Hunter that she would have been placed in Killua's shoes and the story would have been viewed as a derailment of her character.

In short I think Hunter x Hunter is a stronger adventure show because it dispenses with he idea of love interests and that while diversity in a cast may be preferable in many cases the exclusion of a certain type of person (in this case female) is preferable to weighing down a story with a shoehorned character.

As a side note I do know that there is a main female character added to the cast later. I will comment further after I have seen the greed island arc when she appears.