incisivis

I have an ambivalent relationship with the series of Robotech novels, based on the 1980s anime mash-up. On one hand, some of the novels introduced concepts that helped to soothe the various issues I had with the way other continuities handled my favourite characters and things, and also provided me with fanfic fodder. On the other, the novels are generally poorly-written, and also do horrible things with my own favourite concepts. It's a conundrum.

Because of this, I dragged my feet on finding the last two "Lost Generation" Robotech novels, the trio of "midquels" written when James Luceno was the only living half of the "Jack McKinney" duo. The other "Lost Generation" novel, The Zentraedi Rebellion, is, as I've said before, one with which I've made lemons out of lemonade, and which was founded on a solid concept.

However, The Zentradi Rebellion suffered from the same basic problems as the other two novels, which are excessive "grittiness", and redundancy. I'm sure they also mess with continuity, too, but I'm not so invested that I would spend time figuring out how exactly they do.

Recently, I managed to find the last of the "Lost Generation" novels, The Master's Gambit, in a used bookstore. It actually precedes Before the Invid Storm, which I read beforehand, but my apathy should be a clue as to why that doesn't matter too much. I read The Master's Gambit in three days, feeling the urge to wash my hands of it but unable to stop reading. It's one of the few times I've succumbed to that nerd disease known as completism.

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[Unknown LJ tag]This post was delayed for a while as I struggled with the way to put my thoughts to paper regarding the reasons why I avoided Gurren Lagann, and my rebuttal to those who believe certain things about it. I can't avoid the fact that no matter how much I enjoyed Gurren Lagann, there was a time when I avoided the series because of the attitude of its fandom. It's embarrassing to have let myself be affected in that way, especially when I discovered that the series didn't embody the attitudes others thought it did.

Many, many other nerds viewed Gurren Lagann as, by turns: an attempt to bring manliness back to the mecha genre; an antidote to the angst that apparently pervaded the mecha genre; an antidote to Neon Genesis Evangelion; Simon as an antidote to Shinji Ikari. And so on.

Hence, a perfect storm: I am naturally suspicious of anyone who thinks "manliness" is under siege, I am against fans acting as though they are owed an antidote to anything they didn't like, and I damn love Evangelion and Shinji Ikari, both of which have become something of sacred cows for me over the years. Not enough for me to think they should be sacred to others, but enough so that they are deeply engraved into my brain, and anything that is purported to be an attack on them would give me pause in checking out.

And, after watching Gurren Lagann in full, my impression is Gainax was just making the series they wanted to make, something possessing no deeper agenda than to be crazy-fun. I can see how Gurren Lagann could have become those certain things to fans watching, but I don't think it was the intention of the creators for it to be these things, nor do certain interpretations stand up when you look at the series closely.

Kamina and several other characters may rant about "manliness", but it's not some kind of broader statement by the creators about the mecha genre or modern society. Instead, the writers are just echoing sentiments from other boys' adventure shows without really thinking about them, or about the contradiction when there are several female characters involved in combat, proving there's nothing exclusively male about perseverance in the face of adversity.

I'm really glad Gurren Lagann never went any deeper with that focus on "manliness" because, well, "manliness" is a bunch of bull. The first thing I think when I think "manliness" is posturing, loudness, and excessive concern with one's reputation. How else can you put it? I don't believe that "manliness" is just a way to describe the ½ of positive human traits that belong only to men, because there's no set of values just good for one gender. Nor is it a set of rules for men to follow to be a decent human being, for that also needs no special name.

Actually, worrying over the "manliness" of current robot cartoons sounds just like code for worrying about manliness in culture, which is also ridiculous. There is a HUGE culture of pushing male insecurity about being "manly" enough, and pretending the opposite is willful blindness. I don't want that crap in my animu.

I also haven't watched every mecha show ever made, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe there is such a pall of angst on the genre that someone conceived a deliberate response to it. Like all media and genre, I'd imagine the popularity of certain motifs comes in cycles, with nothing dominating for any notable length of time. From my end, angst is hardly a cancer that is killing mecha anime.

Also, since Gurren Lagann is all about being in your face, if it wanted to be about reclaiming a "lost" manliness/be the killer of the mecha genre's chronic angst, it would tell viewers very loudly. But Gurren Lagann doesn't play that game. It just tells a fun story, and doesn't have an agenda.

It would also be very hard for a series to turn out this good if its genesis was showing up other cartoons rather than telling its own story. For this reason, Gurren Lagann is probably a series created out of sheer love of mecha action, not out of any hate for anything. It wants to create something for itself, not to look down on another thing. It's particularly ludicrous to think Gainax would want to create an "antidote" to Neon Genesis Evangelion, a work that put the studio on the map and continues to make them gobs of cash.

The argument is that the characters of Gurren Lagann push forward in the face of despair, while the characters of Evangelion freeze, or earn nothing when they try to fight. This is one of the more developed arguments I've seen. But the plot of Gurren Lagann is completely different from Evangelion's, and the characters are never placed in any similar situations. A very general difference in series-wide "character" between the two shows does not make their relationship oppositional. Gurren Lagann would have had to have a glut of very similar situations to Evangelion's that turn into their opposites in order to prove itself a rebuttal.

The truth instead is that Gurren Lagann derives several story elements from Evangelion, but these end up with similar outcomes. For example, the Anti-Spiral race is revealed to have shut itself away in a mindless collective to avoid gathering too much destructive energy, and this is positioned as the thematically wrong thing to do, standing in stark contrast to the heroes' individuality and life.

However, this shutting away is not analogous to the final actions of Evangelion's main characters, but instead to those of SEELE. The status of the Anti-Sprial sounds a lot like Evangelion's Instrumentality, and Instrumentality was also positioned as the "wrong" thing within its series, the product of the nominal antagonists, and what Shinji eventually breaks from. It might not be as clear or as glamorous as the way Simon breaks from the Anti-Spirals, but it is more similar than different. Hell, both sequences include a "Normal Life AU Interlude" that the characters escape from, reinforcing the similarity rather than opposition between the two series.

Evangelion also wasn't all 'bout despair to begin with, so when Team Gurren defies the Anti-Spiral, they are doing so in the name of Gurren Lagann's own themes, not to attack what would be a strawman version of Evangelion. Gurren Lagann echoes Evangelion, not to judge Evangelion, but because productions from the same studio would inevitably share motifs and elements in common.

Simon being intended as the anti-Shinji I don't buy, either, and for pretty much the same reasons I don't see Gurren Lagann as designed to be an antidote to Evangelion: both characters have far too little in common. They both come from the same "reluctant hero" wellspring, but if Simon was intended to be an anti-Shinji, there would be a lot more parallels than just timidity/insecurity and a vague physical resemblance.

For example, when we first meet Simon, he has already grown up with Kamina as a positive influence in his life, and is an orphan, while Shinji has initially no one at all, before his bastard of a father calls him back. Already the two characters start off in different situations which have a deep effect on how they already act. Starting from those different points, Simon and Shinji are just vaguely similar character types who happen to go in different directions. That Simon looks a bit like Shinji is just Gainax copying itself again, and copying without a value judgement involved.

This is all not to forget that the idea of series/characters needing an "antidote" is ridiculous. Since no one involved with Gurren Lagann has expressed disdain for Evangelion, the idea of an "antidote" for the series being needed seems to have sprung from fans' dislike. Not enjoying the original works are fine, but being arrogant enough to say that the creators must surely have hated things as much as they did, and so this later work must be a "rebuttal", is really petty. For the third time, why would Gainax even bother or care?

I don't know why I let the fandom effect me the way it did, when it's so obvious in hindsight that Gainax had no reason to attack its own. Gurren Lagann obviously won't surpass Neon Genesis Evangelion in my estimation, but it's still a good show. I haven't connected as deeply emotionally with Gurren Lagann as I have with Evangelion, and the flaws I mentioned before do bring the series down. But it was hellishly fun to watch.

Gurren Lagann: The "Normal" Review

I'm going to review this series in two parts: one will be a standard review (standard to my "squishy" style anyway), and the other to address fandom's interpretation of the themes of the series, interpretations that unconsciously put me off the show at first. The standard review begins now, including great big spoilers:

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I know that Khisanth is my favourite dragon when I buy all these crappy adaptations of the utterly boring "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" just so I can get different artists' interpretations of Khisanth Before She Was Interesting. Sounds like the title of a VH1 special, doesn't it? But I don't regret it, especially since it also lead me to discover there was actually a gaming miniature of her produced, that I hope to find one day.

Before we begin, I'd like to welcome myself back to blogging. My last semester just ate me up, so I put this on the backburner for a while. I'm back now, and I've got some things I want to write about.

During that last semester, though, I managed to catch the early release of the first two episodes of The Legend of Korra, sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Mike and Bryan, you magnificent bastards, you had me looking forward to a sequel, and the first two episodes look promisingly good, so much so that I'm not looking all that deeply at it.

It helps that the Avatar universe had a ready-made sequel hook, instead of the creators having to haphazardly invent one when enough money is made: the Avatar, master of all four elements, is constantly reincarnated in a cycle, manifesting in one of the four nations in sequence. After Aang, the titular Airbender, is Korra, a girl born into the Southern Water Tribe. At seventeen, Korra has mastered earth, fire, and water, but lacks the "spirit" needed for air. The hope is that Tenzin, the adult son of Aang and an airbending master, can teach her.

Another thing that Korra does well as a sequel is that it does not spend too much time mooning over the older cast, or what might remain of it. Since there is a new Avatar, Aang is deceased, and a few other characters are said to be dead, too. The only one we see is the elderly Katara, now a grandmother. These characters are treated with gentle reverence, but it is clear that their story has been told, and they will not be overworked. This series knows when to let characters go.

The more obvious distinction is that Korra is meant to be the polar opposite of Aang. Though Aang was undoubtedly heroic, he was (literally) small and unsure of himself, and had a quiet air inspired by Tibetan Buddhism. Korra is (literally) big and brash, and loudly confident. She has mastered all the elements except air, while air was the only thing that Aang knew at first. This means that Korra's quest will involve something new, that the creators will be keeping their work fresh instead of retreading it. It was already obvious that each Avatar was a very different person, but in this case it helps to further separate the sequel from the original.

So, how does the series stack up in execution? In lesser hands, the character of Korra could have been insufferable. If she already knows three elements, there is a source of conflict removed. Headstrong characters in children's television also tend to have it laid on too thick, becoming complete idiots in the process.

Just because a series is designed for kids doesn't mean its characters have to be idiots, though, and Korra is a pretty cool gal. She makes a lot of stupid mistakes, but is a genuinely kind person who wants to do well. She has nuance and some degree of self-control, which go a long way towards making her likable.

Tenzin is obviously meant to form an odd couple with Korra, creating another new source of conflict. This predictable dynamic becomes effective, however, when it's clear Tenzin still has respect for Korra, which gives his interactions with her a quiet dignity. Like Korra, it would have been easy to make Tenzin into a caricature or in this case a one-dimensional "wise old mentor" but he seems more intelligent and worldly than that.

Also, Tenzin is a husband and father. While he's not the protagonist, the way that his family are all developed as distinct characters in their brief screentime, and the fact that Tenzin's family life isn't treated as a hurdle, might hopefully encourage more media creators to be less averse to writing characters as families and parents. Come to think of it, against a lot of common wisdom, Korra's parents are both alive, too, and this could provide new dynamics that other cartoons have avoided: we'll see.

The two brothers aren't that interesting so far, but at t his point I have faith that they'll pick up. Overall I love the world-building going on here: I find the advances in technology credible, and they serve to further distinguish the series as well as looking cool. Add the anti-bending movement and the bending sports, and this feels like a transformed, and even more importantly, a lived-in world, one that comes alive, and is bigger than what's in front of the main character's noses. That was true of the original series, too, and one of the main reasons why it reminded me of an epic fantasy novel brought to television.

So yeah, I'm excited to see more of this show. It's not beholden to the older series, doesn't take the easy way out with characterization, and you know what…I find the pilot more intriguing than that of Avatar. They both have a lot of clichés, but Korra seems to play around with that more immediately.

Step off my nostalgia! It is mighty!

What you have to learn to accept is that there are some works you can't look at objectively, works for which you will forever surrender your critical considerations because there is no alternative. When nostalgia or good vibes, these just swamp your higher brain functions. It might lead to the worst ways of fandom, but sometimes it's harmless.

Samurai Pizza Cats is one such example, of the chronological nostalgic type. I haven't equally embraced everything from my childhood that I've re-explored, but with Samurai Pizza Cats I get the very strong sense that I'm not entirely thinking with my Adult Brain when I enjoy watching it. I can point to reasons why the series is good, but it doesn't change the fact that watching or remembering it turns me into a raging nostalgia monster.

Okay, for those who don't know, Samurai Pizza Cats was a Saban Entertainment dub of Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee, a series about a historical-Japan-styled futuristic town populated by animal-robot…things. The three heroes run a pizza parlour while moonlighting as sentai-style heroes, battling the rat/fox Prime Minister and his group of crow allies, with a different giant robot (usually) every episode. For variously-given reasons (having a bad script translation, receiving no script translation, there being too many untranslatable jokes, etc.) this children's anime was dubbed into a comedy containing fourth-wall breaking, characters speaking as if they were employed actors, references to adult pop culture, bad puns, weird interpretations of onscreen visuals, and an overall junior MST3K feel to it.

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Well, damn. It looks like the Transformers Hall of Fame has put both of my all-time favourite Transformers on their nominee list: BW Megatron and (technically) Rodimus Prime. Both are on my list of top fictional characters, both are important to my fandom nostalgia. When it comes right down to it, could I really decide?

Eh, actually, if you like over-thinking this sort of thing (and you know I do) the choice is easy. BW Megatron is far more the type that deserves to be in any kind of "Hall of Fame", and for many reasons. He's not only popular, but seems to have had an impact on the franchise, as it has since produced more sophisticated bad-guy leaders that could, in theory, have been cast in his mould. Rodimus Prime, in contrast, is virtually forgotten, as there is a Hot Rod role, but no place for a leader who isn't Optimus Prime, and no real change to Transformers archetypes that could potentially have stemmed from him.

Secondly, Beast Wars Megatron was a better-written character than Rodimus in any form. While Rodimus Prime was likeable, and he was a great idea for a character, he never really had any consistent character arc. He had his issues with insecurity wrapped up in one episode, only for them to reappear again and be wrapped up again, while other episodes he was totally in control. He didn't go through a period of insecurity and then get over it as part of the plot, it just appeared and reappeared without warning. It's not the fault of the character, but rather that the writers never gave enough of a damn to plot out a real arc for him. I like Rodimus because he can be heart-bustingly insecure and wonderfully sarcastic, but he was off and on with all this, rather than building towards a permanent change.

BW Megatron, on the other hand, became more unhinged as the story went on, his plans ever more grandiose, until he seemed to have gone bugfuck. Some of this depended on retcons, but nonetheless, Megs travelled a straighter and more focused path than Rodimus Prime did. I also love Beast Wars Megatron's personality, but in that area, he's equal with Rodimus, though they appeal for different reasons. BW Megatron is, in short, cut from a better quality of cloth.

And yes, I realize that in theory the "Rodimus" initiation represents all other versions of the character, too, versions that I know nothing about or don't much care for, but since Rodimus Prime is the Peculiar Olympian here, he's what gets discussed.

On a personal level, I also consider the issue of seniority: Beast Wars was my first Transformer show and my gateway drug into fandom, so BW Megs has that cachet. Furthermore, while both shows are not great, BW holds up better (see "better-written character") than the original cartoon (all seasons). All in all, despite the debacle that was Beast Machines Megatron, BW Megatron still would be more deserving of recognition. He's probably going to win this poll, and nothing would be more appropriate.

However, I'm going to randomly put in some Rodimus votes here and there, because he's still one of my homeboys.

They're also adding Arcee into the Hall of Fame, almost certainly because the original Arcee (again, all versions are lumped together, including the modern one that sprang from Simon Furman's horrible head) was the first long-term prominent female Transformers character. So yeah, that's a legit reason, though I wish G1 Arcee had a more developed personality to go along with that. She was always just kind of…there. Sometimes the "warrior", sometimes the damsel in distress, never building up to a whole picture of a character.

Blackarachnia was also nominated this year but never made the final cut, which is a shame. I had my issues with her character arc in certain spots, but it was nice to see a Transformers character who actually had some character development. I didn't expect that to end in a final-cut nomination, though, since "had character development" isn't usually what people who run these things are looking for, and besides that "Blackarachnia" hasn't really become a Transformers name-as-institution like Arcee. Still, she was cool.

‘Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone': Carina Chocano on "Strong Female Characters"

[Google the title if the link doesn't work]

The Comments on Io9

This article will be more a response to io9's comments on the article rather than the article itself. Chocano's article had pretty much nothing to do with genre fiction at all, while the io9 comments make it all about whether Buffy, Scully, Starbuck, etc. are "men with breasts".

I agree a bit more with Chocano, who seems to be as much against female characters being flawless, as their not being "womanly" enough, though her article still represents the latter. One of the forgotten aspects of progressiveness, likely because it's not all that romantic (in the classical sense of the term), is to show that the minority or persecuted group is just as flawed and can be just as awful as the dominant group.

However, the io9 comments are filled with people who apparently believe the problem with sexism is that the innate traits of women are given less value than the innate traits of men, who desire to re-establish a hierarchy rather than demand greater depth from fiction in total. You're almost waiting for someone to use the term "mannish".

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I've been a dragon fan my whole life. There's just something about the flexibility of the dragon image, with so many different shapes and intelligence levels, yet all of them being fundamentally recognizable as a dragon. Compared to many other monsters, there much less of an idea of what a dragon "ought" to be, and so there is a much wider spectrum of possibility without having to deal with flack at the same time.

Books have always been my primary connection to dragon lore, there being comparatively few movies and television series that focus around them. I tend to prefer stories about dragons rather than stories with dragons, although I'm flexible. I also enjoy a good coffee-table book of dragon art, although with so much dragon out there, I tend to get picky about designs and styles instead of embracing them all equally.

Here are ten dragon books of various types that helped nurture my interest in winged, fire-breathing reptiles. It's meant to be a personalized list rather than an overview, which is why books like The Hobbit or the Pern series are not included. I know what role those books played in founding fantasy literature and in determining the common characteristics of modern dragons, but I never loved them as much as I've done these other books, nor have they had as large an influence on me.

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The Nostalgia Chick: Top Ten "Hottest" Animated Guys

I can't really tell how much of the analysis done in this video is Lindsay playing a character, and how much is what she actually believes. But either way, she brings up points in this video, and I'm going to address them.

It's a little disappointing not to see a female equivalent to the male polymorphous perversity. Guy nerds are definitely more open about their attraction to fictional characters, especially 2D ones, but I don't think this is an inherent gender difference either. I think it springs from encouraging women to be more "enlightened", to not be so crass or so bizarre as to be attracted to something that doesn't exist. But if it's creepy for one gender, it's creepy for the others.

As to the apparent greater diversity that female fans have when it comes to cartoon crushes, I don't think it represents something fundamental, either. I think men and women are equally shallow about looks, it's just that being good-looking, while partly down to genes, is also hard work. Therefore, it's no surprise that men, being in power, subconsciously and gradually created a system with the illusion that women don't care how men look, in order to ease that burden on themselves.

A weird offshoot of this is the notion that women have a wider variety of physical "types" to be attracted to, and in terms of this, it translates into female fans getting crushes on old guys, nonhuman beings, and the Peter Griffins of the world. If all things were equal, we'd either see a dissolution of the idea that women care less about looks, or men would have to admit they can have weird tastes, too.

Granted, it's hard to put this to the test when there are very few elderly women or grotesque female beings as lead characters for guys to go after. Or whether they would want a sugar mommy the way that the Beast can be read as Belle's sugar daddy. I have also seen that male and female viewers tend to "do" fandom differently, but I don't agree that it manifests in female viewers being more interested in character and male viewers in "OMG TITS" when it comes to cartoon crushes.

Have you ever seen a sexpot character without a sultry personality to go with it? Or the personality of an ingénue, or an Amazon, or what-have-you? Most of male fan's female lust objects do have a character. In addition, MOST of the characters listed in the video are young, fit, and close enough to humanoid to be the equivalent to whatever animated girl the guys are into. Frollo and the Beast (as a Beast) are the only real deviations, since Goliath is no different than nerdy guys being attracted to an elf or a demon: a shape that's basically human but with some funny bits glued on.

…Probably because I don't buy into these theories, I'm still gobsmacked by Frollo scoring a spot.

For another observation, It's too bad Tuxedo Mask was the only anime character on the list. One of the few things I still think anime has over American cartoons is that they design some male characters for attractiveness to female viewers, while American cartoons are more likely to design male characters that men would like to be. Sure, female viewers do in quantities like the big-chinned, beefy look, but you can bet this happens by accident.

There are exceptions, of course, and it's no surprise Aladdin made the top, since he's one of those characters designed for the interest of female viewers. Prince Naveen is another one, and he's pretty different from someone like, say, Gaston, isn't he? I think there's a spectrum: some fans find lighter, softer characters more sexy, some find the harder warrior-type more sexy, and this isn't much to do with the gender of either side.

To finish, I don't believe women like "projects" or "bad boys", or if they do, it's a kind of cultural illness and not a fundamental part of the female psyche. And, well, I don't like the tendency to assume that female fans like characters because they want to "fix" them, in the case of villains, or "unbutton" them (literally or figuratively) in the case of stoic characters. Why can't we assume female fans are drawn to the characters as they are? Sounds suspiciously like the idea that women don't know their own minds.

I also don't find what about a tortured past makes a character attractive. It certainly makes them interesting from a storytelling point of view, and it might lead to personality traits that are attractive to some, but the notion that a tragic past is inherently, universally sexy to female viewers is baffling. The assumption probably is that female fans want to nurse or nurture the tortured characters, but that still is assuming female fans want to "transform" the character into their own image, rather than accepting the character as they are.

Basically, I don't think female fans are, by and large, too enlightened for cartoon crushes, or more enlightened than guys are, nor are they more interested in moulding the characters to their image--at least, any more than guy fans would be.