The Animanachronism

From one red-haired Karen to the next, then. I’ve wanted to write about The 08th MS Team for a while, in the way that one aspires to a difficult accomplishment: it’s hard to write about something which is generally so well-regarded. By way of experiment I tried watching the whole thing last Sunday, in suitably tropical conditions with the sun beating down on my windows like The Sun beating down on Gordon Brown whenever he screws up. I still don’t know if I’m up to the task, but at least I had a fun day off. (Spoilers, of course.)

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The funny thing is, wildarmsheero is right: Code Geass doesn’t have a pretentious bone in its body. It’s the fans who are the pretentious ones. The show is just noise and pictures, and it’s the fans who shove the meaning on it. We’ve been here before, and we don’t need to say anything about Code Geass at all - it can just be enjoyed. Nevertheless, some of us find it even more enjoyable if we do say things about it, so, while we don’t need to talk about Kallen, I want to. It’s viewer’s prerogative time.

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This is probably my only chance ever to type this, so I’ll take it.

This blog of mine glows with some awesome DICTION! It’s burning prose tells me to convince you! Take THIS! My text, my pictures and all of my spoilers! SHINING BLOGGER’S WORRRRD! Go! GO! GO!!

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It’s a mixed-up muddled-up shook-up world.

Prompted by the intricacies of the Haruhi genderswap, the vicissitudes of Minami-ke’s Mako-cakes and Baka-Raptor’s recent defiant (and probably tongue-in-cheek) statement that ‘Kyon is not a girl‘. [Regarding the above image: yes, there's version without cropping and with panties. No, I'm not posting it.] ‘Once you’ve fap’d to a trap, can you never go back?’ Granted, this subject is hardly new (here’s one example of many others’ entries on it, and here’s another) but I’m not averse to picking over the bones at someone else’s banquet. I’m a student: food really is scarce.

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Christ has died,

Christ is risen,

Christ will come again.

A very happy Easter to you. [And apologies if your browser doesn't support the thorn in the title.]

WordPress.com’s Global Tagcloud yesterday evening.
‘Anime’ is uncannily well positioned.

It’s time to rehabilitate this chap.

So I was watching Char’s Counter Attack the other night (well, early morning) and considering Char. Why do I find him so compelling? It was then that it struck me: Char is not so very different from everyone’s favourite sketchily-drawn (and for once I mean that literally rather than figuratively) villain, the Anti-Spiral. I’ll grant that this isn’t the most obvious point of Gundam comparison for Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann (’This drill of mine whirs with an awesome POWER’ et cetera, et cetera), but I think the connection is fruitful. As you might expect, this post is laden with spoilers; enter at your own risk. (more…)

It’s a bit like another Judgement of Paris¹

I finally thought I had conquered the urge to compare what are probably anime’s two most prominent mecha franchises, and Washi had to go and open the contrast-floodgates which I had just managed to close. Of course, I haven’t seen enough of either to properly do the job justice (Kaioshin ought to write this), but sometimes in life we simply have to use the best tools we have to hand, just as sometimes in anime we simply have to rely on the untrained teenager who’s been accidentally thrust into the cockpit of the military’s latest toy. (more…)

Nothing adequately encapsulates the amount of awesome in this image
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‘Allegory’ is a word I hesitate to employ. Understandably, it is often used loosely on the internet, to mean something like ‘metaphorical’. I personally prefer to reserve it for a certain type of storytelling, and it’s a type which is relatively rare in anime. (Though perhaps more common in anime than in a lot of art after the ‘Rise of the Novel’.) It’s a kind of complex, extended and (over)developed metaphor or set of symbols which say something.

Frequently, allegory becomes so overtly symbolic that it ceases to feel like a normal story. The Bouge of Court, for example, has a set of characters named ‘Disdayne’, ‘Ryott’, ‘Suspycyon’ and so on, and it’s much more worthwhile to read their behaviour and speeches as examinations of the things they embody rather than as revelations of normal fictional character; Suspycyon’s eyes roll and his hands shake not because of some motive peculiar to him as a person (for he isn’t a person) but because (I think) the poem’s pointing out what suspicion does to anyone.

This sort of thing is, as I said, fairly rare in anime; Gluttony, Lust and Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist spring to mind, and Infinite Ryvius is (among other things) a sustained political allegory. (Is the Ryvius a Ship of Fools?) Another place where we can find something approaching allegory is Mobile Fighter G Gundam - yes, despite the fact that it’s a childish show about large robots, fighting. Or perhaps because it’s a childish show about large robots, fighting: allegory loves reductive simplicity. (more…)

After some thought, I have decided to switch from Contempt to Cutline. Cutline has the slightly wider main column and less cramped text that I was looking for. We’ll see how this works out; comments are welcome. The new theme comes with a new banner, of sorts, with added MANLY TEA, as well as the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster taken from the ninth episode of G Gundam. It’s a little rough-around-the-edges, but if I’m fitting in my blog’s title, my favourite beverage and my location, all in anime form, I can’t be going far wrong. (more…)

1. External forces arrive.

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