Japan's Bill 156

For those not in the no, here it is . In a nutshell, the bill would outlaw manga and anime that, "features either sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life, or sexual or pseudo sexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal."

Now, let's take a look at that: the definition of what constitutes "illegal sex acts" is kind of vague. The definition would be anything, "considered harmful to a minor's mental health regarding sexuality." The problem? With a definition that vague, it can mean anything sexual related. There's a whole genre of manga and anime devoted to older audiences that contain sexuality. Hell, homosexuality could and would be considered "harmful", considering how Tokyo Governor Ishihara considers homosexuals "deficient". So what is this bill about? Leme dissect the main factors for you:

1. Homophobia. Japan's a very homogenized nation. If you're not racialy pure, physically mentally, or emotionally fit, you're discriminated against. Homosexuals have always rated well bellow on the scale in such homogeneous nations, and with a medium that both exploits and celebrates homosexuality in its myriad forms, the general society will view it with suspicion and disgust. Deviancy in any form or expression will not be suffered at all.
   
   
2. International pressure. Recently there was the RapeLay CNN controversy, obviously used to drum up ratings at the expense of a year-old culture shock oddity. However, the UN has gotten on Japan's case, asking Japan to crack down on sexuality explicit media. The west constitutes as the second largest, if not the largest, market for Japanese media. It's obvious that the intention of 156 was to clean house, but the bill is an overreactiaction in a blatant sign of...
   
   
3. Political opportunism and scapegoating. North Korea getting uppity? China has the collective balls of your nation and your main ally in a vice grip? Economic woes causing social unrest? Find a scapegoat! Anime and manga have always been scapegoats in Japan, much like videogames in America even to this day (God I hate my state...).
   
   
4. The industry itself. Watch MasokoX's review of Kanokon. Series like this, Panty Stocking and Garter Belt, and Highschool of the Dead all illustrate a distressing trend in the anime industry: give in to their base nature and produce heavy fanservice shows to appeal to the hardcore audience. Like the comic industry back in the 80's and 90's, the anime industry is desperate to make profit and is exploiting what the hardcore, regular consumers want: gratuitous fanservice verging on the edge of pornography. By doing this, they've alienated the mainstream audience, reinforced the stereotype of "Anime is animated porn" stereotype, and gave political and social opportunists ammo.
   

Really, with this and the aforementioned Schwarzenegger v. ESA case, it's clear that so-called "deviant" media is under fire and used as a scapegoat. The right of expression and the advancement of their respective mediums into true art is being challenged and prevented. Why?

Won't somone please think of the children?!

-BO

Kobe catching flack for Call of Duty Ad

You know, in today's world where the constitutional rights of my favorite medium are being questioned in a supposedly free nation that respects personal expression, where opportunistic politicians and media types jump on any story remotely involving violence and videogames based on pure speculation, this story got my blood boiling.

Why shouldn't Kobe shill for the Call of Duty series? Is it because he's a sports icon who thousands of young impressionable youths look up too and would become violent miscreants thanks to the subversive nature of violent vidogames? Bullshit! It's because we have the double whammy of a minority icon and a media whipping boy and the vultures couldn't resist.

I remember a few years ago the uproar over 50 Cent's then new Movie Get Rich or Die Tryin', in which the ads depicted him with a firearm. Moral guardians and members of the local community decried him, much like Kobe, in supporting a subversive form of media that would harm the children. Except that we had the same thing but with two more famous actors in the same pose and no one said a thing! The fact was that Mr. Cent got more flack because he was a minority figure caught in the crossfire of a hot button topic exactly like Kobe.

Really, both ideas that minority figures have to be put thru more scrutiny and violent videogames are the sole cause of violent tendencies in children and by banning them we can remedy this situation makes me sick to my stomach.

-BO

I'm not dead yet!

HI EVERYBODY!

Yeah, I haven't been posting in weeks: school and all. So to get you guys up to speed, here's what I've been up to:

• Started school and moved on campus
• found a D&D group
• working on a kickass short story for my creative writing class
• addicted to WoW and LoL

So yeah, I've been off the radar for about a month now: if I'm writing a post, I'm writing an essay unto itself. That's how I roll.

This will probably be a double-header: the next post will be a response to The GAME OVERTHINKER: Episode 42: "Worst Person", in which I provide and articulate response against Bob's ideas on the First Person Shooter.

Until next time then...

-BO

Law and Order LA: inital thougts

I'm a longtime L&W fan. The series has taken two of my favorite series: police procedurals and courtroom dramas, and combined them like mixing peanut butter and chocolate...and it's just as tasty as it sounds. I was rather put off when I heard L&W was canceled a few months ago...but to be fair the last episode was surreal in a good way. And my spirits were picked up when an LA spinoff was announced.

Let me be straight with you: I'm a self-loathing So-Cal native. Its just the constant liberal self-righteousness, minority patronizing, and air of unwarranted self-importance disgusts me. Nothing makes me angrier than hypocrisy and nothing annoys me more than douchebaggery, and California pretty much ranks #1. Believe me...I know.

To see, however, the conversion of a twenty-year crime drama series on the west coast and see it work was nothing short of amazing. The first episode opens with a pair of starlets clubbing in an unnamed club in Hollywood, then turns south with a ring of young jewel thieves all being orchestrated by a conniving stage mom using her starlet daughter to distract marks while bonking the point man. Consummate So-Cal at its finest. Nice.

I love it how the perps have adapted to the setting: L&W usually featured mobsters and the like while LOLA so far is featuring the so-called cultural elite in So-Cal: douchebag B,C, and Z list "actors" of the teen and reality variety. Overall its rather surreal to see something like this in my own back yard, but I for one welcome our new visitors, and hope that this series takes off.

Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy falls in love with different girl, boy has to fight different girl's seven evil exes. We've all been there, haven't we?

Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a spastic, reference a minute, geek-culture epic of a film. This is the kind of film that knows its audience and not only how to identify with them but the generation they came from. In this case it's the Gen X geek crowd who grew up with 8 bit games, anime (shonen in particular: think Dragon Ball Z), and comics. Adapted from Brian Lee O'Malley's indie comic series, Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright took something that could of been another insufferable indie film and turned it into a refershingly original gem of a film not seen since Inception.

Set in Toronto, the film follows the protagonist Scott Pilgrim: a lecherous indie-rocker slacker who uses his immense charms to woo girls and gain favors from his friends such as rooming and sharing a mattress with his cool gay roommate Willam Wallace (Kieran Culkin...yes, Culkin). He's part of a band called the Sex Bob-oms (one in a series of many 8-bit references) with guitarist Stephen Stills (Mark Webber) and drummer ex-girlfriend Kim Pine (Alison Pill). While dating the unhinged and obsessed high schooler Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), he meets and falls in love with mind-portal hopping delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Before he can have Ramona as his own, however, Scott must fight her seven evil exes (6 dudes and 1 girl) in a grand Street Fighter-Final Fight-Rock Band videogame mashup slugfest. What follows is a trippy, geeky trip down the rabbit hole as ever conceivable reference to 90's anime, comics, and videogames are being played a mile a minute...yet the film still tells a good story with very compelling characters.

Special props must go to Edgar Wright as this is his film: not Serra's or even O'Malley's. I had the same problem with Serra in the lead role as everyone else did: I just couldn't see him play an action hero right. He's a typecast awkward indie-teen and has played that role in he's been in. I every single film he's been in. I still to this day see him as Evan from Superbad or Paulie from Juno. Yet, despite that, it's Wright and not Serra who makes it work. Serra's indie cred just works for Scott's character as...well, an akward indie twentysomething. The rest of the characters are delightfully good in their respective roles: special props to Jason Schwartzman in playing the truly Magnificent Bastard that is Gideon Gordon Graves (666, baby). Winstead has just the right amount of aloofness to make Ramona work as a standoffish yet lonely ninja babe. Brandon Routh is an incredibly large ham and plays a convincing vegan Sayan thru #3 Todd Ingram. Pretty much every role in this film works and it's more of a testament to Wright as a skilled caster as opposed to the individual actors themselves: a bunch of scraps fashioned into a quilt.

I'm going to be the first to call it out: Scott Pilgrim is a giant Ginax geek-out. I'm serious: Scott's a skittish young man (Naouta-FLCL) who's dating Knives (Mamimi-FLCL) who's an unhinged, obsessed schoolgirl. He falls in love with the older, wild-haired pixie girl Ramona (Haruko-FLCL) who hops thru head-portals, has an affinity for goggles, and kicks all kinds of ass. And Gordon? Well, that lecherous, womanizing and conniving douchebag is none other than Gendo-Freaking-Ikari from Evangellion. I dare anybody to prove me wrong.

If there's any flaws in the movie, it's the first half-hour. In establishing the characters the film has to be slow, but drags on at about the thirty minute mark. Thankfully it's broken in by Mathew Patell (Satya Bhabha) crashing thru the roof to challenge Scott; breaking the monotony of the first half-hour. It picks up the pace and speeds up after that, but the speed change will catch you off guard initially. Stick thru the slow parts, trust me.

All in all, Scott Pilgrim is an enjoyable and incredibly original geek mash-up romp of a film that exhudes X-Gen geekdom and revels in it. This is a generational film, and it might not appeal to its intended audience (older than 18, younger than 30). For those in that age group, watch it now. Scott Pilgrim is without a doubt the Ferris Bueller of our generation: the guy who exemplifies the good, bad, and just plain awesome of our generation.

Final Verdict: A. If you're a self-respecting geek, see it now. Scott Pilgrim is the Ferris Bueller's Day Off of our generation.

Game Review: Dragon Quest IX

As a gamer, I don't like JRPG's. Reasons include linearity, random encounters, rigid turn-based combat, and constant, tedious grinding. That's not to mention the other Japanese aesthetics that are inherently alien to me (pretty boys with way to many belts, etc.). To put it short: the JRPG is an inherently rigid genre of videogame compared to their western cousins which allow non-linearity and a more open form of playing.

I am, however, not immune to a good game. My favorite JRPG's include the Golden Sun series, the Pokemon series, and Chrono Trigger, possibly the greatest JRPG to date. Dragon Quest represents the apex of the JRPG: compared to their former rival and now second cousin Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest has stayed stable and traditional over the years which has appealed more to the tradition minded Japanese as opposed to the more change minded American audiences which Final Fantasy is more popular since each subsequent sequel is radically different from its predecessor. Riding the success of Nintendo and realizing that the JRPG was on the eve of a revolution, Dragon Quest IX was released on the DS and can be best described as a cross between Dragon Quest proper and, of all things, Elder Scrolls IV.

The story is straight forward: you play a Celestrian, a member of a vanguard of like-minded supernatural beings dedicated to the protection of humanity in the name of the Allmighty. Switch out "Celestrian" with "angel" and the "Almighty" with "God" and you can see where this is going. Thankfully, to those who adverse to the...ahem...interesting Japanese interpretation of Christianity as a whole like myself (Evangellion, et all), the "Almighty" is portrayed less as a benevolent and faceless Judeo-Christian Jehova and more like a fickle and vengeance-minded Classical Zeus, and they throw in the world tree Yggdrasil for proper distance. After an unforseen attack upon the Observatory (read: heaven), your character falls down to earth and finds himself in limbo: not human and yet not a Celestrian. With no direct way to regain your Celestrian status, your mission now is to regain the 7 lost Fyggs of the World Tree which are practically like Kryptonite as they grant the wish of whoever eats it, but corrupts it as per the wisher's corrupted nature. Yes, your character is a Messiah and for those of you who grew up in the church or at least have a basic knowledge of the Bible, I'll give you two guesses who the main villain is...

Let me get the worse part of the game out of the way: the graphics. I'm not much one for graphics: as long as it looks great and plays better, I'll play it. I'm not a stickler for "next gen" graphics or hi-def worthy graphics. However: I will balk at when the design choice crosses the uncanny valley. Let me explain: the game uses full 3D, albeit limited to the DS specifications which look more like N64-era graphics. What ruins it for me is the fact that I'm not playing a N64: I'm playing a DS which isn't a home console and shouldn't really be handling straight 3D graphics as they just look ugly. Compare the 3D capabilities of the DS in IX to the 2D capabilities in any of the Castlevania games and you can see that the DS works far better 2D or even 2.5D as seen in New Super Mario Bros. than straight 3D. Another flaw in the design is the creator: Akira Toriyama, the creator of the classic Dragon Ball anime series and designer behind Chrono Trigger and the Dragon Quest series to date. He's a accomplished 2D designer, and for him developing 3D graphics is a step backward. If the DS was used to its full potential, it'd be in beautiful 2D. Unfortunately, the trend is full 3D, and because of that we've got ugly, N64 era graphics.

Now on to the gameplay. The battle system is standard JRPG fare with the option to go AI options on your characters (heal, all-out, defense, etc.) You're better off going full manual: micro-management is the way to go. The class system and skill system are the best parts of the gameplay. A thankful deviation from the JRPG norm is no random battles. Rathter, similar to Paper Mario or the Tales series, monsters appear on the battlefeild and engagement starts teh moment you bump into them. The main drawback is that some dungeons (particularly the endgame ones) where the corridors are so narrow that you're bound to bump into one despite wearing repellent. Both elements are inspired by the best in Western RPG's. You recruit and choose class and appearance your party members as opposed to recruiting set characters and classes. The skill system is similar to Final Fantasy V, in that skill points are given at level ups and can be allocated to class and weapon skills. The problem is that they're permanently set, and when you can actievly change character classes which revert to Lv. 1, it gets frustrating. The worst elements are the Alchemy and sidequest systems, as they've failed in their Elder Scrolls emulations. The alchemy system is a straight-foward item/equipment upgrading where raw materials and weapons are combined in the Alchemy pot to produce better ones. Unfortunetly, the ingredients are too sparse to make it an effective system, as drops and environment finds are few and far between. You're better off having a full-time Thief on your party to fully take advantage of the system. The sidequest system is inadequate at best. On one hand you can keep track of them easily thru a special menu option. The objectives are the typical MMO fare of item/creature kill quotas. Unlike MMO quests, however, there's no XP awarded on completion: just weapons or equipment. If only the alchemy system was more robust and streamlined and sidequests awarded XP, IX would've been an exceptional East/West blend, not seen since Chrono Trigger. Instead, these elements come off as awkward and unwieldy, all way too dependent on grinding for their own good. The uncanny valley is in effect, as the more apparent the Western elements are, the more wrong they appear.

In summary, IX is a solid yet inadequate game. The Western-inspired elements are unrealized and under utilized in a game that defines a genre and would've meant an incredible step forward for the JRPG. Instead, we've got ugly 3D graphics and weak sidequest and alchemy systems which are all too tied down to the grind. JRPG fans will enjoy this game despite the flaws, but those looking for a more inviting and newbie friendly JRPG should look elsewhere.

Final rating: B- (genre fans and the adventurous need apply): Dragon Quest IX tries to put JRPG peanut butter in my Western RPG chocolate, but there's too much peanut butter in this mix and not enough sugar in the chocolate, leaving a bitter mix that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Those with an acquired JRPG taste will eat it up, but those of us with more sensitive palettes will have to look elsewhere.

Other Recommendations: Tales of Symponia (Gamecube), Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door (Gamecube), Chrono Trigger (DS)

You Heard It Here First: Possible EA-Activsion Proxy War

Now on to Video Gaming news. I'm a fan of League Of Legends, which is what's considered a "Multilayer Online Battle Arena" in the vein of the wildly popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients which invented the genre. Spin-offs incude the disappointing Demigod and the newly released Heroes of Neverwith. The game is a mix between RTS and RPG in which two teams of five heroes, each with specific abilities assigned for a specific role, work in conduction to smash the other team's base and defend their own. Strewn across the map are three "lanes" each with three levels of towers and minions that spawn out of the respective base. Players gain an advantage over each other by leveling up thru killing minions and enemy heroes and gaining money to buy better equipment.

The original map was designed in '03 by modder Steve Feak AKA "Guinsoo", which was then taken over by modder "IceFrog" who's variant became the official version offered for free off of the official site DoTA All-Stars. Back in '06 Feak and site admin Steve “Pendragon” Mescon teamed together to found Riot Games and develop their own DoTA inspired game: League of Legends. IceFrog, the last remaining devoted developer of DoTA, was hired on by Valve back in October of '09, the same month League of Legends was released to the general public. Now Valve is developing their own DoTA varriant and seeking a trademark on the term DoTA, which has prompted Riot Games to file a lawsuit against Valve on the grounds that the term shouldn't be trademarked and remain, like the original game, a free property for the gaming community at large, thus protecting hundreds of players from possible copyright infringement.

I've played both DoTA and LoL, and I can say with full certianty that LoL is the superior game. Both are free-to-play, but the former has a very dedicated and hardcore fanbase that doesn't suffer new players at all. Every time I played I was heckeled by other players for being a noob and out-right ordered to just leave. Playing LoL, I may play bad and get heckled for it, but I've never been ordered by another player to leave. Riot Games provides regular updates, new characters, and a streamlined system deveoloped for new players to jump right in. Compare that to DoTA with its confusing characters, no real FAQ's on how to use them, and the confusing item system that requires you to visit separate shops to complete a single item. Already hosting its first official tourtament, LoL has proved itself to be superior in every concept of the word. Valve developing their own DoTA inspired game with its former regular developer can only mean good things, as it provides Riot Games with a clear and present competitor, and competition is ultimately a good thing. Only time will tell how the pricing and update structure will look like, but since it's being developed by the creators of Steam and Team Fortress 2, the best online distribution game service and the best multilayer FPS with the best characters and art style respectively, Valve's project can only be nothing short of epic, and just might upend LoL as the rightful heir to the DoTA throne.

On the surface, this is a cut and dry case. Riot Games co-founder and developer of the original DoTA Mescon holds claim to the trademark, plain and simple. Why Valve trademark it in the first place? Let's take a look back for a minute. Valve is owned by Electronic Arts and Warcraft III, the game DoTA was based off of, was developed by Blizzard who are owned by Activsion...get the picture now?

It's now secret that both developers are heated rivals as the two biggest third party developers in America and possibly the world today. Also take into account the Infinity Ward debacle, where after the huge success of Modern Warfare 2 the lead developers and executives Vince Zampella and Jason West not only left their Activsion-owned developer but filed lawsuit against Activsion on the grounds of unpaid royalties. Both West and Zampella have left Infinity Ward and founded their own studio Respawn Entertainment...hired on by Electronic Arts. Activision was slapped again by current Infinity Ward employees over charges of withholding bonuses as an ultimatum to develop Modern Warfare 3. Also thrown into the mix are claims that West and Zampella wanted to maintain the integrety of the Call of Duty name by forcing Activsion to stop developing yearly sequels by alternating between them and other devlopers such as Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games. While I can't substantiate those claims, they do sound legit as current Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is that kind of boss: a man who cares nothing more than profit, who wants to "...take out the fun of making games..." and exploit IP's for all their worth. Oh and FYI, for my fellow anime fans, Kotick was former CEO of 4Kids...kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

So what does this have to do with the DoTA trademark? Simple: Blizzard would have the final say over the DoTA trademark since it was developed thru their game. Valve filing trademark sounds less like something of their doing and more of EA firing the next shot in the ongoing Activision-EA proxy war. EA won previously with securing Zamella and West and oppening a studio for them. The next step is to fight an indirect battle thru an obscure license and see how Activision/Blizzard bites. By drawing Blizzard into anugly lawsuit battle thru Valve, EA ensures another long and drawn-out debacle for Activision which will force them to spend time and resources that could be spent developing games and using said wasted time in their favor. Yeah, this is petty on a chickenshit level, but that's what happens when corporate rivals and huge sums of money come together: proxy wars and frivilous lawsuits to stick it to the next guy. Fox was the one who sued the rights to the Watchmen film from Warner Bros. who were developing it while they sat on their fat asses waiting for them to finish so they could snatch it out of their hands and gain easy profits after all.

You heard it hear first: a possible proxy war between Acivision/Blizzard and EA/Valve over the DoTA trademark. Stay tuned for more news and commentary from your friend and blogger, Benny Ortiz. Oh, and to all major gaming news sites (1up, Escapist, Kotaku, et all), I called it first.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a betting pool to open. I've got 5-1 odds on Activision/Blizzard: place your bets, people!

My 2 cents: Prop 8 overturned

Well it's official. As of 8/4/10, Proposition 8, a California proposition that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, has been overturned in San Fransisco (natch). For the LGBT community and their representatives and allies, today marks a historic victory in the fight for Gay rights. For religious types and conservatives, today is a dark day in the fight against homosexuality. Would it kill them to be gracious and concede defeat? No, but righteous indignation is so much sexier these days.

I think it's time I finally made my peace on the subject. Express my views and justify them: thru clear, logical discourse. Before I begin: Yeah, I know this issue is polarizing, and most likely I'll be called either a homophone or a gay-lover. I respect your opinion if you disagree or agree with my opinion. I will not, however, be intimidated, shouted down, or bullied out of it. I have to put up with enough of that crap in real life, and I'll be damned if I'll put up with it in the virtual world.

Fellow blogger Moviebob has nicely pointed out that the old "I don't hate gays but..." defense won't fly, especially if you're a fan of Ayan Rand. Well Bob, I'll be happy to say that 1) I won't be using that defense and 2) I'm not a fan of Ayan Rand, the pretentious, fascist, git. No, I'll get straight into it: as a California native, I voted yes on Proposition 8. Why? It wasn't for religious reasons, as I'm practically agnostic on the grounds of indifference. No, I voted for it for something bigger than that: separation of church and state.

Under the first amendment, we have religious freedom here in the US. The catch? Neither religion nor politics can interfere with each other. Birth control is legal and religious displays on a public courthouse are not because of the separation of church and state. By repealing Prop 8 and deeming Same-Sex marriage legal, we have an interesting conundrum here: what about the churches who refuse to recognize/do gay weddings? I'm talking Mormons, Catholics, and a few of the other more conservative denominations out there. Worst case scenario: they'll get their tax-exempt status removed and face lawsuit after lawsuit until they're bled dry.

I can hear them now: "But Benny, if this is a constitutional matter, why are so many people in favor?" Simple: money and politics. Wedding planners get more commissions, divorce attorneys get more cases, lobbying groups get more clout and clients, the state gets more tax income from marriage silences, and Hollywood can look LGBT friendly while using gay stereotypes as a lazy way of characterization (see every effeminate villain, character, etc.). As for the churches like the Lutherans who accept gay clergy/members and host said weddings? I'm not one to get into the semantics of theologies, but I'm pretty sure that the Bible is explicit in that homosexuality is a sin, and that they're to love the person, but disagree with the lifestyle. But to each their own: after all, as a private institution, a church/denomination has the right to accept or not.

And that's the point of it all: you can't force a private institution into accepting a certain group or identity. That's imposing. A recent case on a Christian club not allowing gay members was ruled in favor of the club, since they're a private entity and have the right to accept/decline members as they see fit. Why aren't churches the same way? See the above. The less churches involved, the less tax income. The affiliated groups who are not explicitly LGBT are in it to exploit. There's money/power to be had, and what better way than to exploit a minority cause in the name of human rights? Because it's the churches who are discriminating, not them.

As for the LGBT community, I'll say this: I understand to a certain degree why they want gay marriage. Power of attorney is one of the most important and sought-after rights within couples, especially gay couples who can't get it thru traditional means: marriage. Oh, wait: domestic partnership already does! Why, then, should the LGBT community push for gay marriage when domestic partnership is already does grant many if not the same rights that traditional marriage does?

Because marriage is sexier. Nothing says "acceptance" or "progress" like having your enemy "accept" you thru the law. After all, Atheists could not recite the pledge, but trying to get "Under God" out of the pledge grants more attention. Gays have come a long way from the dark days of HIV where Gays were seen as carriers of an incurable disease during the 80's. They've become a successful minority group with real, effective advocacy. Unfortunately, like every group, there's a point to where advocacy turns to imposing. On the right we have the Westboro Baptists who claim our current conflicts in the Mid East is God's punishment of our tolerance towards gays and regularly protest military funerals. On the left: the playing field has been leveled to the point where Affirmative Action isn't really needed, but opportunists claim its still needed. There's a fine line between expression and imposition. Two wrongs don't make a right, and imposing yourselves upon Christians and other religious types looks petty.

Oh, you don't think that Christians are being imposed? Explain, then, how after Prop 8 was passed, how the local Mormon Church was protested, despite the fact that 69% of Black people voted in favor. Now, by that fact, why didn't the LGBT community and supporters initially make a bigger effort to reach out to the Black community instead of protesting Mormons in the wake of it being voted in, and still protest Mormons such as recently announced documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition? Two reasons: First, and most justifiably so, Mormons where the primary backers and financiers for the Prop 8 Campaign. But secondly, it's not PC to protest Blacks. It's so much easier to go after the Mormons because they're a natural target: White, middle-class, and conservative. Now, protesting them is more acceptable then, say, protesting a local predominately Black church in which its members voted for Prop 8.

To be fair, conservatives and backers of Prop 8 haven't been completely blameless. There's plenty of homophobia to go around the Prop 8 supporters. Most of the dialogue on their side has been morality: how marriage is a sacred institution that must be defended, and such. While that's a valid claim, black-and-white indignation sucks all the air out of the conversation, and only widens the gap, undermining any hope for compromise. Yeah, nobody gets exactly what they want in compromise, but at least both sides can come to an agreement. If the dialogue was changed to how there's a definite concern over the separation of church and state, how they feel that if Prop 8 is overturned, the state might impose that every church should observe gay unions. Maybe if the dialogue was done that way, Prop 8 would still be instated, or at least it'd be modified to say that Churches have the right to refuse to host or participate in gay unions. Again: righteous indignation is so much sexier.

So, in short: a private institution can't be forced into recognizing something they refuse to. The law can't impose on religion, just like how religion can't impose on the law. Denominations like Catholicism, Mormonism, and the like can't be forced by the law to recognize what they feel isn't morally right, even if morality can be subjective, or if it seems "homophobic". If gay marriage should be recognized on a state-wide basis by the will of the people, then so be it. The recent repeal was against the will of the people since the law passed with 52% of the vote: a slim but valid majority. However, maybe Prop 8's repeal isn't a bad thing: maybe it'll give Prop 8 proponents time to go back to the drawing board. Prop 8 should be redefined as a Separation of Church and State issue as opposed to a morality issue. If, however, Gay Marriage should pass with a clear majority, then there should be a rider attached that individual churches and denominations have the right to refuse to participate. If homosexuals should want to have their vows done by a church, there's plenty that will accommodate by their own choosing, such as the Lutheran Church which recently made efforts to welcome Gay clergy and members.

Let's hope that someday we'll come to an agreement, and the will of one group won't impose upon another.

Well that's it for my Devi's advocate part. I'll be doing this again in the upcoming weeks. Until then, to those who agree/disagree, I respect your opinion. You can't change a person's opinion, but maybe hope to persuade them thru discourse.

Cowboy Bebop Retrospective Part 4

For the past few posts I've gone on about what makes Bebop so special: from the themes and settings to the strong characters and excellent score and dub. For the final post, I'll examine its legacy, how the series has aged, and why we need another like mainstream success.

In the ten-plus years since its creation, Cowboy Bebop has aged like wine: incredibly well. Ask most mainstream viewers what their favorite anime series is, and they'll list this along with other like series with western themes such as Trigun or Ghost in the Shell. The most hardcore, sub-only otaku will admit that, yes, dubs can work because of this series. Bebop transcends fandom lines: hardcore and casual fans alike will all agree that this is a exceptionally good series and their favorite. This is our Batman: The Animated Series: an animated series that even those who’ve outgrown “cartoons” can look back fondly as being an excellent series. So in short the series has aged...but the legacy hasn't.

Let's look at Bebop's immediate successor: Samurai Champloo. Created by Shinnichiro Wantanabe a good five years after Bebop, Champloo continues the theme of taking two completely unrelated forms of media and mashing them together with better-than-expected results: Kurosawa-inspired samurai drama with American-style hip hop and rap. The characters are similar, in that we have a headstrong skilled martial artist (Mugen) pared off with a patient, stoic experienced warrior (Jin) and a girl who's trying to find out her mysterious past (Fuu) with a cute pet (Momo). All the like elements are there...and yet Champloo falls flat. I've seen it frontwards to backwards and compared to Bebop, Champloo just doesn't match up. The characters are less developed and complex compared to Bebop's beloved cast. The story's episodic and with weaker characters the individual plots come off as lacking. That’s the problem with making such a groundbreaking series: setting the bar so high. Given the similarities between both Bebop and Champloo, it’s apparent that Wantanabe tried to bottle lightning again and failed. Champloo is a good series, but it just doesn’t hold the Bebop magic.

In my humble opinion, Bebop’s true successor is…Black Lagoon. We have a crew of misfits including a stoic, imposing and bald leader who’s frequently frustrated with the crew’s enforcer; a violent, anti-social sociopath who’s dark past broke her into the bitch she is today. They are accompanied by a hacker who provides basic intel and communications for the job at hand. Together they add on another member and go around on jobs offering a service seen as reserved for the lowest of the low: pi-ahem…courier service. The main differences aside from the setting and the specifics of the job is one the violence. Lagoon’s level of violence is what Bebop was back in the day. While Bebop is John Woo meets Sergio Leone, Lagoon is John Woo meets Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez. In upping the violence to ultra-violence levels Lagoon successfully progresses off of Bebop much like how The Dark Knight did from Batman. When a medium progresses it’s given more leg room and often times grows more violent, and done well it’s an incredibly good thing.

The second difference, and a welcome one at that, is the wildly-different leads. Rock isn’t a hype-capable badass like Spike: he’s an ordinary salary man abducted by pirates and eventually drafted into their crew. He’s a pacifist and what he lacks in combat skills he more than makes up in his diplomacy skills. He’s the only one in the Lagoon company capable of solving problems outside of violence and has the skills to do it. He’s also, much like a newcomer to anime, a fish out of water. He finds himself in a completely alien concept and tries his best to adapt. While he’s trying to figure out what’s going on, we’re doing it with him. This makes him much more relatable than Spike, but it doesn’t make him a better character. Both characters suit their respective series’ needs: Spike’s a badass who we can’t exactly relate to but it doesn’t matter because we’re too busy cheering him on as he kicks epic amounts of ass while Rock is a pacifist who we can relate to since Revy’s the one kicking ass and he’s the witness like we are.

Lagoon’s Tarantino -inspired action and surprising depth from its very human characters and their philosophies (one quotes Jean-Paul Satare for crying out loud!) would of made it the next big thing since Bebop…and yet it wasn’t. What happened? To put it simply, it was a victum of circumstance: the right series in the wrong time. Lagoon was distributed here in the states around ’08, when we were knee-deep in the Great Recession. Companies were taking fewer risks and the price of producs went up. Geneon, Lagoon’s producer went belly-up in ’09 and thankfully the series was salvaged by Funimation. But Lagoon never received the same amount of marketing or exposure that Bebop did: it was never aired on Adult Swim or any other channel to the best of my knowledge. It was simply dead in the water: doomed to ironically lie adrift at sea.

The sad tale of Lagoon is an active symptom of the anime industry today: take fewer risks and try to capitalize off the established audience as much as possible. This is a sound decision in hard times: companies don’t have the funds to market themselves to the mainstream so they focus on the fanbase. Unfortunately, much like comics in the 90’s the industry anime is in that same transitional period and is dangerously close to crashing and becoming loss to obscurity. With comics it was grim and gritty with the success of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns while with anime it’s otaku-ness with the success of series such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The industry just isn’t learning: while otaku-favorites like Inuyasha kept fans going back in the day it was mainstream hits like Bebop that brought them in the first place. If the industry wants to maintain itself then they have to do a better job at finding a mainstream hit and marketing it further: spend more money on market research and extensive group testing. If we as fans of anime want to keep our medium alive then we have to do our best to promote the more mainstream-friendly classics like Bebop or Ghost in the Shell or even Trigun.

So what’s the next move? Well outside of a third season of Lagoon (fingers crossed, yo!) and the proper marketing, the industry should make do with what it has. Baccano is a worthy prospect and Adult Swim should probably invest a few hours into it. As far as creating a new Bebop, let me keep it nice and simple: classic western themes and conventions thru an exceptional eastern perspective and adaptation. Bebop, Shell, Lagoon, Trigun, and Baccano all share the same theme and are/were destined for mainstream success…they just need or needed a little bit of love.

That ends my Cowboy Bebop retrospective. Bebop was more than just an anime: it was our Batman: the Animated Series: an animated series that transcended fandom lines and mainstream sensibilities and became an instant classic and huge success. However, progress marches on, and it’s only a matter of time ‘till someone, somewhere finally produces our The Dark Knight…and hopefully we’ll be there to enjoy the ride. Thanks for reading, and, oh yeah:

See you next time, Space Cowboy.

Movie Review: Inception

As an English major and an appreciator of good stories, it's been hard to keep myself positive about finding good stories in today's age of 3D gimmicks and reality TV. I'm a child of the 90's, I grew up watching shows like Batman: the Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain: animated series with sophisticated stories and great action that kept kids entertained and adults interested. I moved on to anime and found series like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell which provided equally sophisticated stories. Years of this and what do we have now? American Idol, Seltzer and Friedberg, and Michael Bay.

It's enough to make me cry sometimes....

...until I saw The Dark Knight, and I regained faith.

Christopher Nolan has proved to be a consistently good director in the field of Speculative fiction (AKA comic book films and Sci Fi) and his latest work Inception was his baby: his pet project for ten years. Those ten years have delivered. This is without a doubt the best original film of the year and the decade so far. A film that combines a deep, think-heavy story with literally lucid and visceral action that tops The Matrix as a cyberpunk film.

The film is set in not-to-distant future where specialized heist teams called Extractors can intercept a mark's dream and steal valuable information from their subconscious. Di Caprio plays Dom Cobb: an extraction master on the run and dodging extradition from the states by hopping between Japan, France, and Australia. A Japanese corporation owner, Mr. Saito ( Ken Wantanabe) approaches him with an offer: plant an idea into his competitor's subconscious and he will make it possible that all US charges will be dropped against him. Desperate to see his children again, Cobb assembles a crack team, each with their own role: Cobb as the extractor, Arthur (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) as the point man, Ariadne (Ellen Paige) as the Architect (I see what you did there, Nolan...) Eames (Tom Hardy) as the Forger, and Yusef (Dileep Rao) as the chemist. Sabaauging their efforts is Cobb's own subconscious guilt over the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) which manifests itself regularly to sabotage his efforts. How are they going to pull the plant? By creating a dream within a dream within a dream: 3 levels of dreams! Reality is relative and perception is warped in its more promoted scenes in the trailers.

The effects are so visceral because real world factors actively alters the subconscious: if the body is off balance the physics are off balance, and yes, they do establish that if you die in a dream you wake up. I haven't seen a film with such ambition and grandeur since Nolan's previous film The Dark Knight which was a morality tale writ large. Inception is an old-school Noir heist film twenty minutes into the future as crafty subconscious safe crackers. As a speculative film, the implications are terrifying: how do you defend something you have little to no control over? The question of their own sanities also come into play with Cobb's own deep-seated guilt issues actively sabotaging his efforts. It's a grand cyberpunk heist film served straight, no frills and I loved every minute of it.

Film experts and critics have been asking if this film is too deep for the average filmgoer: well, yeah! Did anybody understand The Matrix the first time around? No! But if you set off enough fireworks it'll keep audiences busy enough to where they won't get confused. Don't see it to understand it the first time through: see it to have fun and to see how far a film can go with the right imagination. Christopher Nolan is without a doubt the Stephen Spielberg of our generation: no other director has delivered so much visceral consistency in years, and I salute him for reaffirming my faith that good stories do have a place in Hollywood today.

Final Rating: A. Go see it right now. Support the efforts of a true visionary and show Hollywood and the rest of their ilk that we do want originality and good stories in our media. This is Ghost in the Shell meets James Bond and Nolan pulls it off as epic as it sounds.

Cowboy Bebop : A retrospective (part 3)

In my previous post I described Bebop as an episodic series and by its nature strong characters are a necessity to make up for a loose story Each episode functions as its own plot and outside of a key arch or two there is no real story. The characters therefore have to be strong to make the most out of the plot. We see this in most comedy and crime fiction series such as The Simpsons and Law and Order in that each episode stands on its own but the characters are so relatable and iconic that we’re willing to overlook the paper-thin story or even weak plot. Bebop is no exception as while the main cast and the secondary characters are based on tried and true tropes and archetypes it’s Director Wantanabe’s take on said archetypes that make these characters so damn fun. In general terms we can spot the tropes each character represents a mile away: Spike’s the stoic antihero with a dark past; Jet’s the old-fashioned parental figure obsessed with keeping order in an otherwise chaotic environment; Faye’s the bitchy femme fatal who uses her…ahem…talents to woo men to her advantage; Ed’s the mischievous kid genius who acts as the team hacker and intel gatherer; Ein’s the team pet, obviously. What should be flat, two-dimensional characters, however, are turned into strong and relateable ones in the hands of an expert character creator.

Spike is a former Syndicate enforcer partnered with brother-in-arms Vicious until a girl, Julia, got between them. Betrayed by Vicious, Spike is on the run from his former employers and his psychotic ex-partner who’d like nothing more than to disembowel him himself. Spike’s stoic and focused demeanor are undermined by his chaotic nature as he deals with most if not all his problems with violence. As much as a badass he appears to be, he’s trying to run away from a past that’s actively trying to kill him and still holding a torch for the woman he loved. Jet’s the least liked character of the crew with his uptight attitude and old-fashioned ways make him less of an aging badass and more of a crotchety old man in the eyes of some if not most of the fanbase. For me, he reminds me of Mel Gibson’s partner, Rodger in Die Hard: both were played by Black actors, both were/are cops, and both have to deal with over-aggressive and over-confident younger partners. An old-fashioned sort who still belives in honor, he’s the sole voice of reason amongst the selfish and/or crazy other member. A true renisane man, he’s the ship captain, cook, mechanic, and an aging hipster who enjoys jazz and blues while tending to his bonsai. Faye’s more than just a manipulating, selfish bitch: she’s also a troubled soul. A fish out of time-space water, Faye was put in cryo-freeze and knows absolutely nothing about her past. Her first love since waking up turned out to be a con who faked his own death and left Faye with debt up to her eyeballs. She’s convinced that humans are inherently selfish creatures and uses that as her excuse to cheat, con, and seduce anyone to get her way. Underneath it all is just a hurt girl looking to belong. Hacker child prodigy Ed combines both Doc Brown’s eccentricity with Calvin’s mischievous nature and animal partnership (Ein). She is an odd, adorable, and fun character who’s feline nature and habit of singing random songs make her one of the most fun and memorable characters in anime history. This is pure magic, folks: thanks to director Shinichiro Wantanabe and writer Keiko Nobumoto who put exceptional effort in turning two dimensional tropes and archetypes into living and breathing characters that are nothing less than iconic.

On the technical side of things, the animation is crisp, smooth, and fluid old-school anime animation. We're talking the turning point of anime technique: when CGI was first experimented in traditional hand-drawn anime and Bebop was on of the first to experiment. The CGI was minimal: the space gates and a few other small scenes here and there. In today's world where practically any and every anime series incorporates CGI into overuse (the late Studio Gonzo, Kyoto Animation, et all), this minimalist use of CGI is nothing short of refreshing. The non-CGI animation is gorgeous and still holds its own even in today's CGI saturated landscape. The dub is simply the greatest dub in anime: even better than the original Japanese. The reason being that the main cast simply added on to the character's personality. Steve Blum gives Spike an added Eastwood-esque edge while Wendee Lee adds more sexy and even a much needed vulnerability to Faye. Beau Billingslea adds a more paternal tone to Jet and Melissa Fahn provides a more mischievous Ed. This dub is what launched the careers of both Steve "Spike" Blum and the Hardest Working Man in Dubbing Buisness herself Wendee Lee, who currently holds 300+ voice acting roles. and is our version of Megumi Hayabshibara. Directing the dub was Mary "The Major" Elizabeth Mcglynn who's also the velvet-smooth voice behind Major Kusanagi of Ghost In the Shell. When you bring this much talent to a dub, you know it's going to match if not outdo the original. And the soundtrack? One of the best and most revolutionary soundtracks in anime history. No other anime used jazz and blues so extensively in their soundtrack, and it includes other genres such as heavy metal, big band swing, and everything in between. The uniting theme as I stated in my previous post is that every genre used was a counter-culture one to match the equally misfit crew. You can listen to the soundtrack on its own, but its one of the rare ones where its designed to move specifically for the show, as it moves along with the action like partners in a flawless ballroom dance. All these elements combine to complement the already solid characters and plot.

Cowboy Bebop is not just an anime but as it likes to refer to itself "a genre unto itself". This revolutionary series was our Batman: the Animated Series: what we could point at as proof that our medium can not only be mainstream but sophisticated as well, and the go-to we used to introduce our non-fan friends into the madness that is anime. Where other series pushed the boundaries or even added unto the genre, Bebop succeed in where they didn't: bringing a whole new generation into anime. Kudos, Sunrise, Wantanabe, and all the rest of the cast.

Well that's it for the show itself. For the finale, I'll examine the Bebop legacy: how its aged, its rightful inheritors, and why we desperately need a series with like mainstream appeal.

My 2 cents: Roman Polanski

Just recently Switzerland denied extraditing Roman Polanski: Oscar-winning director famous for Chinatown and The Pianist. As other fellow Bloggers have pointed out, notably Moviebob, the case has been used as a political football: conservatives using him to crucify Hollywood for being so immoral that they'd defend a ephebophilic (like a pedophile but for post-pubescent kids and not pre) and liberals defending him for being a tourtured soul who's expectant wife was murdered by a member of a Manson Family and accusing the right as being a bunch of intolerant apes.

Uggghhhh....Can we stop the political bullshit? The point is that Roman Polanski was charged and accused of sexual abuse despite the fact that the victim allegedly forgave him after all these years. Trust me: after 30 odd years you're better off forgiving and forgetting because this kind of thing can and will eat away at your soul. The fact is that Polanski has to stand trial for his charges despite if he's innocent or not. That's how the justice system works: under the principle of Habeus Corpus every person regardless of citizenship has the right and the responsibility to represent him or her self in a court of law for whatever crime they've committed here in America. Polanski's responsibility, therefore, is to come to America and face his charges. The accusations that LA wants to use him as a scapegoat is complete bullshit: this is California where as long as you're famous and can pay for a Cochran you can get away with anything from pedophillia to murder to anything in between. I'm a native Californian, and this is one of the many reasons why I hate my state. For the record: yes there are worse states (I'm looking at you, Arizona).

The real reason why Polanski is skirting justice is because he knows that 1) he's guilty and 2) his odds are between Robert Blake and Phil Spector. He's committed a heinous crime and it is an imperative that he show up here so that justice can be served. Switzerland is not just spiting us, but justice as well. Personally speaking, while I don't know the man well enough to hate him, I will say this: Rest assured that there's a deeper pit in hell reserved for the next guy, and there's a spot reserved for you, Mr. Polanski. 30 years with this kind of guilt eating away at your soul is the least that you can suffer thru.

Just my 2 cents....

Next post: Cowboy Bebop retrospective Vol. 3. Yeah, I've got to get my procrastinating ass on this.

Cowboy Bebop: A Retrospective (Part 2)

In the previous post I discussed the landscape that was present for anime fans back before Bebop. How anime was still for the most part an obscure medium and an underground hobby save for the children series that were so easy for certain dubbing companies to bowdlerize (*cough-cough 4 Kids cough-cough*) to hell and back. If anything was going to break our hobby out of the mold It'd have to be something that would not only appeal to a wider demographic, but one that would appeal to one in a different nation. For today's post I'll examine the setting and theme in Bebop and how it was a success here in the US.


Before I begin, I'd like to state one important caveat. Just because I say "western" does not mean it's dumbed-down or of a lesser quality than its eastern counterpart. Yeah, unlike some of the more...ahem...vocal fans of anime, I'm not a weaboo. You won't see me arguing that subs are better than dubs because as an English major I'd rather watch the dub if it's good. I have no disillusions or biases based on cultural conventions. As long as the story's good I don't care where it's from or how it's made.

Anywho, let's take a look at the setting of Bebop. The science-fiction setting is exceptional in that it's less fiction an more speculation. Science fiction falls under the umbrella term of "speculative fiction" in which a different reality is predicted. Science-fiction speculates upon the future, and generally the more realistic, natural, and organic the future is, the better the story. As I've mentioned before, one of the clear influences of Bebop was Alfred Bester's magnum opus The Stars My Destination. Both settings feature technological advancements and settling on distant planets. The idea of expansion beyond the planet earth is one very appealing to an American audience since space exploration is a program we take pride in...or at least did when we actually had competition. Much like Stars, however, despite the technological advancements humanity has become worse off. Bester described it as an "...age of freaks..." and that pretty much sums up the state of humanity as crime has gotten so out of hand that the Inter-Solar System Police (at least I think that's what the nonsensical acronym means) is stretched to the limit. To cope, the ISSP has authorized bounty hunting and extradition laws to not apply on a inter solar system scale. Ah, bounty hunting: what's more American than trusting the extraction of dangerous criminals with the vigilante-suspect public? Seriously, we're the only nation that allows criminal extraction as a private enterprise on a large scale. Since the days of the old west the common man has done his best to take in criminals for pay, and the series expresses this ethos especially well, as they're even called "cowboys" in-universe. For Bebop, the outer space is the new Wild West and its 300K cowboys are living out The Man With No Name's legacy on a wide scale.

Now for the themes. Probably the most apparent theme in the show is redemption. Each member of the crew has some deep and dark past that despite their best efforts to try to evade it still catches up with them. Spike's past as a syndicate enforcer is actively out to kill him; Jet's skeletons as a former ISSP officer are marching out the closet: Faye's trying to figure out her own; Ed's just trying to find her Dad. During the series each character is forced to come to terms with his or her own past. Spike's past is the active myth arc in the series and produces the best episodes as it involves a jilted love, a psychotic rival, and a criminal syndicate, effectively establishing a very noir theme in a decidedly space western series. To add to these themes is a decidedly counter-culture undercurrent from the music which encompasses all counterculture music from jazz to heavy metal to blues to everything in between. The characters themselves are misfits from a former mafia enforcer to an ex-cop to a con woman to a mischievous androgynous hacker kid. This is a very heavy cocktail and if taken straight all at once it might give people headaches. Fortunately series writer Keiko Nobumoto opted to pen the series episodically: each episode standing on its own so that realtive newcomers to the series and/or genre can dive right in and not have to worry about continuity. The series therefore plays more like an old-school detective show like Magnum PI or Hawaii 5-0 as opposed to a continutiy based series such as Lost. Much like their profession each episode is just another bounty job and we're just along for the ride. This series is one very much tailor-made for western audiences as its themes and settings are more fitting to an American audiences than to a Japanese one: Bebop is arguably more popular here in America than its native Japan because of how it defies the established anime conventions into a coherent and refreshing take on the genre.

The problem, however, with an episodic story is that the characters have to make up for a light story. So are the characters strong enough to hold the series? That's for next time in Part 3 where I'll examine the characters and the technical aspects of the series such as the animation and the exceptionally good soundtrack.

Cowboy Bebop: A Retrospective (Part 1)

I think it's time we blow this scene, get everyone and this stuff together...okay, three, two, one, let's jam!

Thus began Cowboy Bebop: one of the most popular anime series in the world, particularly here in the US. I've often joked to my friends that Bebop was one part Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, two parts John Woo, one part Spaghetti Western, and a splash of one of the best jazz soundtracks courtesy of Yoko Kanno. Any of these elements would do well on their own: combine them and you've got a unique and surprisingly tasty cocktail that goes down smoother than milk.

The question is why this series is so popular even to this day. How is it that a ten year old series even today still maintains mainstream success? What about it made Adult swim the House that Bebop built? Why is this one of the very few series that even today non-anime fans cite as their favorite anime series? Well let's take a look at not only the series itself, but its competition. For part one, I'll examine the series itself in relation to what was around before in why Bebop is arguably the most popular and best anime series to date.

First, let's take a trip down memory lane. It was the early 2000's: that magical period between the beginning of the new century and 9/11. The 90's hadn't ended yet and if you were an anime fan you were watching Toonami (RIP '97-'08). It was the first of its kind: a programming block devoted to airing a nice blend of anime series besides Pokemon and other fan-favorite western animated series. We got Gundam, Tenchi Muyo, and Dragon Ball Z and Batman: the Animated Series in the same programming block. Texas-located distribution studio ADV (RIP '92-'09) took a chance on a little known series called Neon Genesis Evangelion. Thanks to its phenomenal success, ADV became known as "The House that Eva built”. All of these series were popular, but none of them had mainstream success in older and more sophisticated viewers. Why?

Series such as Dragonball and Pokemon were children series to begin with. That's not to say they weren't good, just that they were inherently for younger audiences. For the older anime fan wanting something more for our sophisticated sensibilities, we had Gundam and Eva. Why didn't our non-anime fan friends take to them? Why wasn't it easy to introduce our friends to anime thru these popular series? For one thing, Mech series are a rather alien concept her in the US. Sure, we had Transformers, but they were full-on robots and not true mechs. A true mech is piloted rather than fully automated and sentient. To most western audiences, and even me, if you're riding around in a mech, you might as well be riding in a tank. To compensate for the high mobility, mech armor has to be thin: so thin, that a tank shell would blow clean-thru it. Eva was a deconstruction of the mech genre and something different than the garden-variety series, but it had three strikes against it. Disturbing religion-based imagery, copious and equally disturbing gore, and bat-shit crazy characters. Come on: Asuka was a violent, possibly perpetually-menstruating little bitch, Rei was intended to be designed on the wrong side of the uncanny valley, and Shinji? Dear God, Shinji! I haven't seen a whinny bitch this bad since Spiderman during the Clone Saga, and even then he got over that while Shinji was always an annoying little whiner*.

Biases aside, this was the reality for anime back then. No mainstream success aside from the children series meant that if something didn’t happen soon the media we know and love would be forever pigeonholed as “for kids” for years to come without the chance of a renaissance. The hardcore fans or otaku as they’d rather be called can whine and reason ‘till they’re blue in the face but the reality is that good things can come from mainstream success. Most if not all of our most cherished past times have only gotten better after the mainstream accepted their legitimacy: how many of us ten or even five years ago would’ve predicted that a Batman film would’ve not only won an Oscar, but gain so much prestige that most non-comic fans consider it one of the best if not the best of the previous decade? It’s because after years of being bastardized thru the God-awful camp that was the Adam West show the mainstream came to accept Batman and comic books as well as a legitimate form of media. West begat Burton’s Batman which begat the awesomeness that was Batman: the Animated Series which begat the film we all know and love: The Dark Knight.

The same rule applies to anime, and the years between ’98 and about ’03 were a reckoning for the industry. Either we were going to get a series that we could finally show our friend that wouldn’t weird them out and they’d actually like or anime would be doomed to years of painful obscurity before its eventual death. The question was where would it come from and what would that series be? What was going to be our Batman: the Animated Series? The series we could point at as irrefutable proof that the medium can be both sophisticated and be enjoyed by just about anybody? A little animation company named Sunrise and a director by the name of Wantanabe during the late 90’s would answer the call and create something magical.

Well that’s part one. Stay tuned for part two where I’ll examine how the themes and setting of Bebop succeeded in winning an audience beyond the otaku here in America.

In the mean time: for you older fans out there, please sound off in the comments on how you tried to introduce your friends into anime before Bebop.

*Nothing against Eva fans: I don't hate Eva, it's just the kind of thing that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Strucutralism: A primer

Well now that I've introduced myself, now I'd like to establish my critical style: structuralism.

Structuralism is one of the many literary theories out there, and one that I identify most with after learning it in my Lit Theory class back in spring quarter (You rock, Prof. Edlund!).

So what is it? In a nutshell, the theory establishes that it's not just what's in the text that counts: It's the conventions of the genre, the author, and the real-world history, among other factors, that are just as important in analyzing the work in question. They act as influences in what the author took to create it. Saussure was the inventor of the theory back in the 50's in which he established the main mechanics: signified and the signifier. In layman's terms, the signified is the archetype and the signifier is an interpretation of said archetype. By comparing said interpretations against others is the heart of structuralism: see how one interpretation stacks up against another in relation to the established archetype. Another critic, Derrida, later added on another key element: said elements work in some kind of system in said work. The characters, themes, and other elements work hand in hand in some kind of system relative to the work.

Alright, enough with the dry explanation: let's use an example. This is an abbreviated version of my paper in my Lit Theory Class: a structuralist analysis of Watchmen. Yes, that Watchmen. Admittedly it's more of a character study, but hey, it works.

In comic books, there are established superhero archetypes. The most recognizable archetype is the superhuman: an alien or ordinary human with near-omnipotence that either work for or against humanity. Superman is the most recognizable superhuman, an orphaned alien from a distant planet who acquired superpowers from our sun's radiation. He works for the good of humanity as a benevolent example of the superhuman. Dr. Manhattan, however, is a ambivalent example of the superhuman. Since he's practically God in this universe, he's all-powerful and immortal. Despite that, he's still subject to human emotions such as alienation and apathy. Once he becomes alienated from humanity he abandons it and spends the rest of his days in solitude on Mars. The moment he leaves there goes our WWIII deterrent against the Russians. Russia successfully invades Pakistan and we react by readying the nukes. Sometimes what's scarier than a higher power who actively conspires against humanity is one who doesn't give a damn. At least with the former you have order: with the latter there's nothing but abject chaotic horror.

OK. That's structuralism. For my next post: a Cowboy Bebop retrospective*.

*all blog content subject to change. I do have a life, after all.

Please allow me to introduce myself...

...I'm a man of wealth and taste...

Free internet cookies for those who got the joke.

So, hello blogverse. I'm Benny Ortiz (Pen name: I actually value my privacy). I'm a twenty-something English Lit major currently attending classes at Cal Poly. I'm an inspiring professor/critic/author/whatever the hell a English Lit major will bring along. I figure I might as well get all the big questions out of the window so that when you call out "Bias!", you know why.

1. Political affiliation: independent conservative (Voted for McCain, disagree with both the Tea Party and Arizona Immigration law, huge fan of The Daily Show, Gov't oversight is necessary to keep the Con Men out, believe that both Private and Public sectors provide essentials that the other can't, respect gays and lesbians but disagree with the lifestyle.)
   
   
2. Hobbies: video games, anime, writing, comics casually (huge Batman fan).
   
   
3. Genre likes: Seinen anime (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Black Lagoon, et. all), slice-of-life ( BECK Mongolian Chop Squad, The Wonder Years, et all), Crime Fiction (Law and Order), Noir, Cyberpunk, Westerns, Desert Punk & post-apocalypse (Fallout), casual Fantasy fan, political satire (The Daily Show), animation (South Park, Futurama) .
   
   
4. Videogame likes: FPS (Valve junkie) RPG's (Fallout, Pokemon, Torchlight ), WoW, League of Legends, Castlevania, turn-based strategy games (Advance Wars, Fire Emblem), PC and DS gamer.
   
   
5. Genre dislikes: intra-apocalypse (Eva, et all), mecha (Gundam, et all), Harem (Love Hina et all), Michael Bay (The Devil), reality TV. etc.
   
   
6. Videogame dislikes: RTS' (can't micromanage worth a damn), most JRPG's (hate excessive random battles and grinding up the wazoo)
   
   
7. Generation identity: child of the 90's (grew up on Animaniacs, Batman the Animated series, Pinky and the Brain, Looney Tunes, Pokemon Silver Version, etc.)
   
   
8. Ethnicity: Hispanic (Long story short: huge contradiction. Conservative, don't like spicy food, don't know any Spanish. Get use to it: I've got a whole lot more)
   
   
9. Religion: non-practicing Christian. Respectful of all religions
   
   
10. View on life: realist (hope for the best, prepare for the worst)
    
    
11. Favorite sites: TV Tropes, That Guy With The Glasses, The Escapist.

...Well I think that does it for now. If I remember anything I'll add to it. I think it's important to establish who I am up front so that we can all get acquainted.

I first got into blogging upon a professor's suggestion that I practice my critical skills thru a blog. So here I am. Nice to meet all of you.

For future post...A Cowboy Bebop retrospective critical analysis. For next post: an explanation of my critical style: structuralism.

Until then, cut your teeth on the Wikipedia article on structuralism