‘Drink less, or taste not the Pierian spring’

No mecha musume Fairey Swordfish exists.
But if one did, she would be a tea-drinker.

Yes, more about mecha. In fact, the first, more boring, half of the entry that I posted the second half of last weekend. A blog entry like the Haruhi adaption and Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza, I suppose.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Fighting Machines

‘Mecha’, as a genre, is odd: there’s nothing obvious inherent in our humanity which makes us hungry for titans of steel beating seven kinds of coolant out of each other in the same way that, say, people are prone to falling in love and so we hunger for stories about love. Mecha appear to be very much styling – however inextricably bound up with substance style is – in that most of the time you could replace them with some other weapon; you wouldn’t have the same show, but the character conflicts and action sequences could still remain in place. And indeed, it’s not unheard of for mecha to be inserted at the sponsors’ insistence.

Sounding Foreign in My Mouth

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s features a group of magical antagonists whose combat terminology is in German, although this is by no means the only foreign language used in the series (Bardiche and Raging Heart are noted for their English, while ‘Asura’ is a Sanskrit term and so forth). Quite what the status and connotations of the German language are in Japan I’ve no idea (though I’d like to find out) so I can’t guess what the intention of the staff behind Nanoha‘s German is.

Theological Quandary for the Haruhiists

More confusing than a PIME TARADOX?

Suppose you’re a Haruhiist, and you desperately want to see this genderswapping gem animated (though it has already mutated into clipshow form).

So . . . is it acceptable to pray to God that She might change Her gender? And is She the same God when She’s a He? This is, of course, assuming that Haruhi can be God and gendered at the same time. I wonder if anyone’s actually given thought to an internally coherent theological system for Haruhiism yet?

[Incidentally, it was recently announced that Haruhi is getting a UK release. And not before time too, I might add.]